Dept to contact welfare recipients over laptop theft

The Minister for Social and Family Affairs is seeking to reassure social welfare recipients whose personal information was contained on a stolen laptop belonging to the Comptroller and Auditor General.

Mary Hanafin says her department will be writing to everyone whose personal details were on the machine, which went missing in April last year.

The C&AG was carrying out an audit of payments and records relating to 2005 and the details of up to 380,000 records were on the laptop at the time it went missing.