Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
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11. 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 2024; if a breakdown will be provided on the nature of the breaches; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [41734/24]

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 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

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

In addition to these data breaches, and in accordance with advice sought and received from the Office of 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 misdelivery of documentation in the postal system. This includes consignments which have been correctly addressed and dispatched by my Department to the intended recipient, but subsequently lost or misdelivered by the postal provider.

Where a consignment containing a passport is correctly dispatched but 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. My Department regularly engages with the postal provider to highlight the issue and monitors global postal issues arising which may impact the dispatch and safe receipt of documents issued or returned by the Department.