We email the Taoiseach about his use of Gmail account
THE Irish Mail on Sunday has attempted to get the Taoiseach to answer the question of whether he has considered the implications for Freedom of Information legislation of using a Gmail account.
Mr Kenny’s press office, the taxpayer-funded Government Information Service, last week issued an irrelevant statement, and this week refused to go any further.
So we decided to email the Taoiseach directly, in case the country’s leader was unaware of his press office’s peculiar response.
As of late last night, we have received no response.
Dear Taoiseach,
My name is Seán Dunne and I work for the Irish Mail on Sunday newspaper. I am currently working on a story about your use of a personal Gmail account to conduct some of your official Oireachtas business.
Last week, we reported on your use of a personal Gmail account, and that on at least one occasion you replied to a TD who had made representations to you on behalf of a constituent of yours.
Prior to this report, we raised questions with your spokespeople regarding the inherent security risks associated with using a Gmail for official business given the risk of it being hacked. We evidenced this risk with the example of an incident in 2012 which saw the then head of the Garda Cybercrime Unit having his personal Gmail address hacked. We also asked about the potential for the private Gmail to be used to circumvent FOI legislation.
In response, we received a statement that failed to engage with our questions, and which ultimately we published in full under the headline ‘Gobbledegook’. Your press office did eventually answer the security question on Sunday when our sister paper, the Irish Daily Mail, put it to them again after we published our story. Since then, a number of your ministers have confirmed that they also use personal emails for official business – increasing the already large public interest questions surrounding this issue. And in recent days, we have had documents released to us under FOI legislation, detailing one instance which shows you have been using the Gmail account since at least 2013.
The information released to us is described in the FOI decision as too ‘commercially sensitive’ to be released [some three years after it was first communicated]. This appears to contradict suggestions by your press office that no sensitive information has been communicated using your Gmail. We will be reflecting this in the story I am preparing this Sunday.
We have asked your press office about this fresh information, only to be told vaguely that a previous statement – released prior to the emergence of the FOI records and not even actually released to us – somehow answers this issue. We don’t believe it does. As such I’d like to ask you, Taoiseach, please, for a direct comment on the issue of your use of Gmail, and whether your Gmail account has ever been used, either intentionally or unintentionally, in a manner that could circumvent FOI legislation.
If you’d prefer to talk by telephone, you can contact me on [mobile phone number]. Kind regards, Seán Dunne.