Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
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140. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade the number of data breaches experienced by his Department in each of the past ten years and to date in 2023. [42366/23]

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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My Department documents personal data breaches that have occurred in accordance with Article 33(5) of the GDPR.

The table below sets out the number of data breaches reported to the Data Protection Commission (DPC) since the introduction of the GDPR on 25 May 2018 in respect of which this Department bore principal responsibility.

On the advice sought and received from the DPC in 2020, my Department further notifies that office of cases of what are described as postal carrier breaches, that is the loss or mis-delivery of documentation in the postal system. This includes consignments, which have been correctly addressed and dispatched by this Department to the intended recipient, but subsequently lost or mis-delivered by the postal provider. In 2020, 36 such cases were notified; in 2021, this figure was 75; in 2022, this figure increased to 328; and so far this year 386 cases of postal carrier breaches have been notified.

From an analysis of the 328 consignments lost or mis-delivered in the postal system in 2022, 58% were dispatched to Britain (110) or the US (80). 19% (61) were dispatched to addresses on the island of Ireland and the remaining 25% were destined for the Rest of the World.

During this period in 2022, the Passport Service issued in excess of 1,085,000 passports while almost 17,000 individuals were entered in to the Foreign Births Register. The total number of postal carrier breaches reported therefore represents 0.03% of the total number of applications approved and dispatched.

My Department exercised caution in light of the wide-spread and protracted nature of Royal Mail strikes last year followed by a cyber-attack on Royal Mail systems and the posting of passports and supporting documents to Great Britain and Northern Ireland was temporarily suspended from 12 December 2022 until 25 January 2023. However, while these measures reduced the number of potential data breaches, the impact of the Royal Mail strikes in particular has contributed to an overall increase in data breaches in 2022 and 2023.

Where a consignment that is correctly dispatched is lost in the postal system, my Department takes responsibility for cancelling the lost or compromised passport and reissues a new passport as standard practice. Similarly, the Passport Service provides assistance to individuals whose supporting documents are lost when being returned to an applicant through the postal system. The Passport Service has also engaged with the postal provider to highlight the issues.