Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Data issues in Church abuse audit resolved

THE DATA Protection Commissioner has refuted claims by Catholic bishops that an audit of the Church’s child protection practices is being impeded by laws restricting access to sensitive personal information.

All data protection issues affecting the independent audit of the Church’s child abuse reporting obligations were resolved a year-and-a-half ago, the Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) said.

The comment came after a statement from the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference calling on the Government to "take the necessary measures" to deal with data protection issues so that the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church (NBSCCC) could fulfil its job.

Last May, the NBSCCC expressed frustration that until recently it had been prevented from carrying out its audit because of the Church’s concerns over data protection laws.

Last week, the bishops’ conference accepted progress had been slow and that they "shared the board’s frustration". They said the difficulties were due to the need to observe data protection legislation.

"Data protection difficulties are real," said the statement. "They are not fabricated or invented to prevent progress."

The bishops went on to say lawyers for the NBSCCC had identified in 2007 that the law of data protection would pose problems. The statement added: "Three years later, in 2010, the board engaged with the Data Commissioner to deal with these issues."

The statement cited the DPC’s annual report, also published last May, which referred to "complex data protection issues" that had to be addressed when processing personal data by a large number of separate, constituent organisations with the Church.

The bishops added: "To address the complex data protection issues that exist, bishops ask Government to take the necessary measures so that the National Board can fulfil its full remit in terms of receiving and sharing information with Church bodies, as it was established to do in the first place."

In response, a spokesman for the DPC said all data protection issues had been resolved by February 2010.

"This office, as outlined in our annual report for 2010, engaged extensively with the Church authorities and the National Board to assist them in addressing the data protection issues which they identified," said the spokesman.

"As far as this office is aware those issues were fully addressed to the satisfaction of all parties and that there are no obstacles to the Board having full access to all relevant personal data for the purpose of comprehensive audits of the Church bodies concerned."

Part of the issues related to the fact that the Catholic Church in Ireland is not one legal body, but an organisation with 164 separate, legal entities, comprising dioceses (some cross-border) and religious orders.

A spokesman for the NBSCC declined to comment on the bishops’ statement, other than to indicate that their audit was "proceeding well".