Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

223. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform if he and any Minister of State under his Department use a personal e-mail account for work purposes; the security controls that are in place relating to the use of personal e-mail accounts for Department related business; if his Department has a policy on this matter; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [5259/17]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I do not use any such accounts for official business. Ministers and Ministers of State at my Department are bound by the Code of Conduct for Office Holders as drawn up by the Government pursuant to Section 10(2) of the Standards in Public Office Act 2001 and by the Department's own Governance Framework, and are therefore cognisant of the obligation to act ethically and judiciously when conducting official business electronically or otherwise.  Department policy is to restrict access to webmail services from the Department's network and this is implemented via leading industry standard web browsing filtering appliances which prevent access to all external webmail servers by all staff on their work computers.

Consistent with the Code of Conduct for Office Holders Minister of State Eoghan Murphy uses his departmental email accounts for conducting official business across both the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and the Department of Finance, and continues to use his Oireachtas account for Constituency matters.  The Minister of State has used personal email for transactional and diary management purposes but has since put in place arrangements for this to cease.