The Data Protection Commissioner has said measures have been put in place to ensure the confidentiality of people's information, following reports of information leaks from Government departments.
It was revealed yesterday that a former Department of Social and Family Affairs employee leaked confidential information to his brother, a criminal, who used the information to burgle one man and attempted to extort money from three others.
Responding to the news, Data Protection Commissioner Billy Hawkes told RTÉ's News at One the "department has assured him" they are working to ensure confidentiality and we should "expect the highest standards from the State with regard to our information".
"I'm very confident that they [the department] have taken firm action against people who have been guilty of leaking information and that they're also working on technological solutions which would limit the access employees have to data in the system."
"It is very important that we should have confidence when the State holds our information that they deal with it confidentially . . . I expect to carry out another audit of the department in the next six months."
Mr Hawkes said there have been a "number of revelations of leaks from that department" and that recently some officers carried out audits of insurance companies where there was "clear evidence information had been leaked" to private investigators.
An article in yesterday's Irish Independentrevealed that in 2003 a data protection worker in the Department of Family and Social Affairs broke the Official Secrets Act and leaked information to his brother. The man later admitted it is common practice among civil servants to check up on the financial status of friends, family and celebrities.
Fine Gael's Social and Family Affairs spokeswoman Olwyn Enright said this latest leak "is only the tip of the iceberg and a culture of wrongly accessing private files has developed almost unchecked". She said measures should be implemented to enable easier detection, "such as requiring every official who accesses a file to record on the system why they are doing it".
