Irish government has lost 100 laptops in the last five years

In all the fuss being made over Britain’s data blunders in the last few months, no one has paused to think, what about the Irish ?

A couple of months ago, we reported that the Irish had managed to shred a whole days worth of unopened post. Dublin’s Four Courts saw a days post shredded by accident by a contractor.

Shortly after that, Allied Irish Bank (AIB) sent the wrong payslips to the wrong people resulting in quite the bit of panic.

But is that really all of it ?

Apparently not. Ruairi Quinn of Education and Science for the Labour party told Silicon Republic that nearly 100 notebook and desktop PCs have been lost or stolen from Irish government departments over the last five years, along with 14 BlackBerry smartphones and 11 portable media devices.

Quinn suggested that all manner of computer devices should be encrypted and protected with strong, secure passwords and said,

“We have seen from recent revelations in the UK that missing computer disks and laptops, some with confidential intelligence information, can cause distress for both Government and citizens”

The phrase, “no duh” comes to mind. Still, at least someone is learning from the UK’s misfortune.

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