Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 25 June 2014
47. Deputy Clare Daly asked the Minister for Health if he will describe in detail the Access to Institution and Related Records project established in 2002; and if he will provide the number of name entries in the name database created as part of the project. [26881/14]
View answerThe Department of Health and Children began the AIRR Project in 2004. Its purpose was to examine the Department’s child care files, find any references to the names of children who were in care and to create an index containing those names. The purpose of the index was to facilitate efficient and thorough searches and retrieval of records on behalf of individuals seeking their own personal information in the context of Freedom of Information legislation, Court Orders of Discovery and applications to the Residential Institutions Redress Board. The Project involved the indexing of all papers held by the Department relating to child care services, some of which contain information referring to individual children who were in care. The personal information references have been indexed onto a specialised ‘names index’ along with other relevant information.
The data capture project took over two years and the names index was completed in 2006. The index contains 148,201 name entries. The same or similar entries are on that list on more than one occasion. However, it is not possible from the information on the index to say whether these refer to different individuals. Hence, the number of names does not necessarily reflect the actual number of persons involved. A person's identity is only established when a request for information is received.
