My Department necessarily collects, processes, and stores significant volumes of personal data from our citizens, staff, and service providers. In particular, the effective delivery of passport and consular services for Irish citizens at home and abroad is a central component of the Department's work and necessitates the processing of personal data.
My Department endeavours at all times to safeguard the personal data that it processes and takes its responsibilities in this regard very seriously. Data breaches are reported to the Data Protection Commission (DPC) and were deemed low or medium risk to the data subject. The main cause of these data breaches was human error. Examples of such an error would include incorrectly addressed correspondence issued by post and email. The remainder of the breaches were mainly attributable to instances where documents that were correctly addressed and dispatched were subsequently lost in transit through the postal system.
In accordance with the Department’s obligations and in line with good customer service, people are routinely notified in the event of a breach involving their data, except in cases where the breach is deemed to pose no risk for them. In accordance with the legislation data breaches that are assessed and deemed unlikely to result in a risk to the rights and freedoms of natural persons are not required to be reported to the DPC.
