Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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939. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the number of data protection breaches identified within her Department in 2019. [33852/20]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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In 2019, my Department identified 374 data breaches.

My Department takes data protection obligations very seriously. In order to protect the personal data of its customers, the Department has in place a set of data protection policies, procedures and guidelines.

While every data breach is a matter of great concern to my Department, the number of confirmed breaches should be viewed in the context of the scale of the Department’s business, administering over 70 separate schemes and services and processing almost 2 million applications every year.