The Central Statistics Office has owned up to a data protection breach.
According to
independent.ie, a staff member made an error, which saw thousands of the CSO's employees' files being leaked.
It was first thought only 1,000 former employees were breached, but it has now been confirmed that it was 3,000.
In a statement, the CSO has "sincerely apologised" to those affected.
“The Central Statistics Office confirms that between November 10 and 14, 2017, as a result of an administrative error, personal P45 information relating to 3,000 former employees was disclosed via email to 4 individuals, in breach of the Data Protection Acts.
“Three of recipients were themselves former employees who had sought access to their P45 records; the fourth was the accountant of one of these former staff members.
“The error was discovered on the 14th November and each recipient was immediately contacted and requested to provide confirmation that the emails and their contents had been deleted. These confirmations have been received.
“The CSO immediately notified the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC) of the breach and the individuals affected have been informed by letter.”
The spokesman continued: “Confidentiality and protecting individual privacy are core values of the CSO.
“This incident falls well short of the high standards of confidentiality and data governance demanded by the Office and is taken extremely seriously.
“A sincere apology is extended to those affected by this employee data breach.
“A thorough investigation of the incident is underway and additional control measures have been urgently implemented to safeguard employee data and to reinforce data governance,” he said.
