Enda’s emails so sensitive we can’t see them. So why DID he use Gmail?

ENDA Kenny used his private Gmail to get Cabinet memos, regular diplomatic messages, sensitive information about Irish citizens killed in terror attacks abroad and potential trade secrets, the Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal.

This is despite claims that the Taoiseach only uses the unsecure service for ‘non-sensitive’ emails – claims made by his chief spindoctor, Government Press Secretary Fergal Purcell, who is paid a taxpayerfunded €115,000 a year.

Following a four-month battle with the Department of the Taoiseach to release documents under Freedom of Information, this week officials finally released his Gmail records, which date back to July 2011.

The MoS can now reveal that Mr Kenny used the account to receive sensitive official Government business, despite denying this before Christmas. He used the private non-secure account to receive three Cabinet memos: about Jobs Department expenditure; rural revelopment and extending the vote to citizens abroad. He was also sent details so ‘commercially sensitive’ they were withheld or only partially granted under the FOI Act. It also appears many citizens, understood to be Fine Gael members, have the email address, leaving it open to hacking, according to a senior security expert.

‘It poses a threat to national security’

Last year, the Taoiseach’s office said he used the email account for ‘non-sensitive’ official business. However, in the FOI release, there were 24 incidents where this newspaper was refused access to the emails because they were too sensitive. We were also refused partial access to eight documents, due to their sensitivity.

His department could not release some emails because they may potentially contain trade secrets. On February 18, 2014, he received an email from the regional manager of Curtiss-Wright, which said it provides, ‘several international defence forces with vital aerospace, ground and naval defence systems and support’.

The material on the Taoiseach’s unsecure email was so ‘commercially-sensitive’ that it was only part-granted.

Even in documents that were released, deeply sensitive topics were discussed.

He got an update to his Gmail on June 27, about the death of three citizens who were killed in the 2015 Tunisia terrorist attack.

In the correspondence between the Taoiseach and his private secretary Nick Reddy, who has a taxpayer-funded salary of €42,000 a year, Mr Kenny wrote in response to the latest on Irish casualties: ‘Suppose we should make contact with Brit PM, German Ch and Belgian etc re sympathy if appropriate. Glad all assistance being given. E.’

The update had details of the need for the bodies to be identified using dental or medical records to confirm two of the fatalities. The Government Press Office has again refused to comment this week on whether the Gmail account may be a potential security threat. This is despite reference to a 2012 case in which the Gmail account of a senior garda – then head of the cybercrime division – was hacked by an Irish teenager as an example of potential issues. When asked yesterday afternoon about the Taoiseach’s previous statement, which had stated that he used his Gmail account only for ‘non-sensitive’ information – and whether he or his spokesperson had misled the public on this – a spokesman for the Taoiseach said: ‘As stated by the Taoiseach in the past, there have been occasions when he has used his personal email because of operational reasons.’

Tom O’Connor, managing director at online security company lan.ie, told the MoS that the fact that Mr Kenny’s email address is so widely used, with constituents and ‘old pals’ emailing about book launches etc, it poses a risk to national security when sensitive information is also there.

‘It’s a serious problem for the IT department in Leinster House that the Taoiseach continues to engage in important official business on a nonsecure network. Basically, it looks bad because we know what happened with the gardaí getting hacked and it could happen to the Taoiseach’s account especially as his email address is so widely used.’