O’Dea warns of chance PPS numbers could be misused
Fianna Fáil social protection spokesperson Willie O’Dea raised the issue after a recent case where private investigators accessed personal information that they obtained from Tánaiste Joan Burton’s department.
The social protection minister congratulated the data protection commiss-ioner for a successful prosecution against the private investigators involved.
“The firm illegally obtained customers’ personal data from a staff member of the department and it is my understanding that information relating to customer addresses solicited by the private investigations firm was passed on to credit unions,” she told TDs.
“I am very concerned at the behaviour of credit unions in these cases.
“I have been informed that the private investigators were extremely adept at duping officials in the department. They displayed a high degree of professionalism and training in duping techniques. They already had customers’ personal information, such as dates of birth and PPS numbers. Departmental staff members require such personal information to ascertain whether telephone inquiries are from genuine sources.
“I was deeply disappointed to hear it is apparent that the clients on behalf of which they were doing this were credit unions.”
Mr O’Dea asked what steps have been taken to stop a similar state of affairs occurring with Irish Water.
“Essentially, credit unions that had access to PPS numbers rang the department, pretended to be representing another state body, and sought the addresses of people they were chasing for alleged bad debts. Does the Tánaiste agree that this perfectly illustrates the danger of making people’s PPS numbers available to third parties like Irish Water?
“As soon as a PPS number is given to a third party, the potential exists for anybody and everybody ultimately to access it. Somebody who is equally adept at duping social welfare officials might make a telephone call in the morning claiming to be from the southern area health board and looking for information like this.”
Ms Burton said that PPS numbers were safe.
“Social welfare legislation specifies that PPS numbers can be used by certain specified bodies, such as Irish Water, only for the purposes of public service transactions. Irish Water cannot use PPS numbers for any other purposes. That is set down in law,” she said.
