OFFALY COUNTY Council has apologised to more than 400 second home owners after it emerged that their e-mail addresses had been sent to every other recipient of a reminder e-mail in error.
The council’s head of finance Declan Conlon said it had apologised to all recipients of the original e-mail, which had been sent to remind those who had failed to pay a tax on their second home that they could be liable to fines.
Mr Conlon said the council would be re-examining its policy.
“We will be reviewing our protocols in light of this and evaluate anything that needs to be done to mitigate something like this happening again.”
However, he said no action would be taken against the person who sent the e-mail on Thursday, adding that “human error” could and did occur.
As of yesterday evening, one formal complaint had been made to the Data Protection Commissioner, while the commission was contacted by a number of other people concerned at the disclosure of their personal information.
Deputy commissioner Gary Davis said it had already been in contact with the council, which was due to report on Monday.
“This is not just simply about e-mail addresses but this also reveals the recipients in a pretty identifiable way that all the recipients have a second home,” he said. “Offaly is a small place and a lot of people might not want to reveal that.”
The e-mail was sent to owners of second homes, who first registered their details in 2009.
Home owners who were due to pay the non principal private residence (NPPR) charge of €200 for 2010 by the end of June received the e-mail to remind them that they would be liable for a late payment fee of €20 a month from July 1st. However, recipients’ addresses were inserted into the “To” field rather than the “BCC” field, which would have stopped their addresses being revealed to other recipients.
The e-mail was sent to 592 recipients but some of these addresses were replicated where individuals had more than one property. No financial or individual property details were disclosed in the e-mail.
One recipient who contacted The Irish Timessaid the matter was particularly sensitive in a small place like Offaly.
“People’s private affairs are their own business,” the recipient, who did not wish to be named, said. “If you know people in Tullamore, you can pick out people. There’s no anonymity there. A lot of people would recognise names on the list.”
The Office of the Data Protection Commissioner also confirmed yesterday that a similar incident had occurred in Cork County Council last week when 200 e-mails were sent to second home owners, revealing recipients’ e-mail addresses as a result of a software error.