Dail Report:Taoiseach Bertie Ahern is to raise the theft in New York of the laptop containing personal details of Irish blood donors with the data protection commissioner
The laptop went missing when a New York Blood Centre staff member was mugged.
Mr Ahern said that the staff of the Irish Blood Transfusion Board were conscious that the blood banking computer system required improvement.
"They went to where they had been advised were the best records in the world. What happened was unfortunate, but these things happen," he added. "Everyone will say one can hack into anything nowadays, but the IBTS and the NYBC strongly believe that this is an extremely remote possibility. However, they will take all the necessary precautions."
The Taoiseach was replying to Labour leader Éamon Gilmore, who said that one of the concerns must be to ensure continuing confidence in the blood bank so that people did not stop donating blood as a result of what had happened.
"It is ironic that the Irish Blood Transfusion Service set out to seek help in securing the information only to end up with somebody walking around with it on a laptop on a street in New York where it ended up being stolen," he added. "There is something incredibly sloppy about that."
Mr Gilmore suggested that the Taoiseach ask the data protection commissioner to undertake a full review of the security arrangements surrounding personal information supplied to departments which were held electronically.
Mr Ahern said the blood bank had entered into an agreement with the New York Blood Centre for the provision of a data query tool last October.
"The purpose of the data warehousing reporting tool is to improve the existing IBTS blood banking system computer, which is called Progresa.
"The issue the IBTS was trying to deal with was improving its own security and service, which is why it had set up the New York agreement," he added.
"Under the terms of the agreement, the IBTS exported data on a CD from its Progresa system for the period July 2nd, 2007, to October 11th, 2007." Mr Ahern said the data contained details of 171,324 donor records, including name, address, date of birth, gender, blood group and contact telephone number.
"The CD holding the records was handed over to personnel of the NYBC in Ireland during the week beginning December 3rd last and it is retained by the NYBC in a physically secure environment," he said. "No data stored on the encryption volume can be read or decrypted without using the correct password, key files or encryption keys."
Mr Ahern said the blood bank and New York Blood Centre considered that the risk of any person being in a position to bypass the password controls and decrypt the data was extremely remote. He added that on the evening of February 7th, a blood centre staff member was mugged outside his home in New York and the laptop stolen.
"While the police have been notified and an investigation into the robbery is ongoing, the laptop has not been recovered. The IBTS and the NYBC are very concerned about the theft and the IBTS informed the data protection commissioner on February 11th about the matter."
