Why is the Department of Education so determined the POD, its new database of all Ireland’s children from the age of 5 and up, is established? Why is it so vital to them that the Minister will regularly threaten to defund children’s education if their parents object?

At first, I’d have said it was just the usual blind institutional inertia. But then I read the papers on the site the Department refers schools to for Data Protection guidance from the POD site. And it suggested another explanation.

Though it is always impossible to know the motivation of a Government Department, this explanation fits all the available facts and explains some POD mysteries. It is also consistent with how institutions behave and think.

I think the POD database project was, in whole or in part, designed to provide the Department of Education with individual files on pupils to use against them as evidence in the Department’s defence in any future child abuse claims that the children might bring.

Facing liability for child abuse, the Department want a file kept on every kid aged 5 & up.

It only became possible to hold the Department for Education responsible for abuse in schools in Jan 2014 after the European Court of Human Rights overturned the judgements of the Irish High and Supreme Courts in a case taken by Louise O’Keeffe. That same month, the Circular establishing the POD scheme was issued.

The first surprise I had was discovering that the Dept of Education’s plans to build and retain a database of sensitive personal data on school children go back to at least 2008, as revealed publicly by the Data Protection Commissioner in 2010.

The Commissioner’s office says schools are gathering Personal Public Service numbers and other sensitive personal information from pupils on behalf of the Department, but many parents are unaware that the information is being passed on and the extent to which it may be used in the future. -RTE News, 13th July 2010

2008 was the year Louise O’Keeffe lost her Supreme Court case to find the Department of Education liable for child abuse in school, prompting the appeal to the ECHR in Strasbourg.

After the Data Protection Commissioner intervened in 2010, the Department pledged to stop trying to illegally collect sensitive personal information about schoolchildren.

But they really wanted that data on kids’ special needs and psychological assessments. So when they issued the POD Circular they simply decreed those records weren’t sensitive personal data.

we cannot assume a congruency between the requirement for special educational supports and the existence of a physical or mental health condition - Department of Education & Skills statement to me, 20th Jan 2015

This is an astonishing assertion. as, literally, Section 1 of the Data Protection Act defines Sensitive Personal Data as including any data relating to

(c) the physical or mental health or condition or sexual life of the data subject,

My first clue that there might be something beyond just unthinking institutional overreach about the Department of Education’s policy came when I followed the link from the bottom of the Government POD webpage. It leads to the Data Protection for Schools website, written-as it says- in consultation with the Department.

That site advocates grossly excessive “indefinite” retention periods for multiple categories of sensitive data, just as the department did.

The difference is that the schools’ guidence site is explicit about why they want to hold kids’ records indefinitely. It is to use against the children to defend any abuse claims in the future.

there is some data which may be held by Schools which Schools are advised not to destroy. This may include child protection records. This is because the Statute of Limitations (Amendment) Act 2000 has special provisions relating to the limitation periods in which claims for child sexual abuse may be brought.

…

Such documentation is often crucial in defending the actions taken by a school when their behaviour is called into question many decades after the fact. -paras 3.3.4–3.3.5, Data Protection for Schools

Anticipating resistance, the Department’s FAQ for schools said that, other than race and religion, whether parents consented to the transfer was irrelevant. Schools were ordered to transfer all the rest of the data to the Department, with or without consent.

As soon as it became liable for child abuse claims the Department of Education suddenly started trying to build its own stash of children’s data and hold it indefinitely, per this circular. The reference to keeping the data until kids’ 30th birthdays is a smokescreen. That was set as the minimum retention period, but there was to be no maximum retention period.

It’s also worth noting the congruence between the data the schools wanted and those the Department sought via POD.

Schools wanted a permanent database of files on children-psychological reports, special needs etc to use against kids in future abuse claims.

And the same month-January 2014- the Department of Education became liable for claims, they also demanded kids personal sensitive data re psychological assessments etc. Crucially, they insisted that they were non-sensitive data so that they could avoid the requirement for parent’s consent.

The POD database even has a field to store Notes on children, written by school staff, to be kept indefinitely. What would Louise O’Keeffe’s Notes, made by the teacher who abused her, have looked like, I wonder?

And other than using those notes in evidence against the children in the future, what possible purpose could the Department have in storing them indefinitely?

In 2010 the DPC spoke out about the Department’s illegal demands and the Dept promised not to illegally take sensitive personal data without parental

The Dept really want that data. Even after more that a quarter of all schools reached the deadline and hadn’t transferred data, risking the complete defunding of all their pupils’ education, the Dept were only willing to say that- just this one year- they wouldn’t require those most sensitive pieces of data be handed over.

It’s this combination of tunnel vision and clear focus on the material most valuable to a defendant facing victims of child abuse that goes some way to explain why the Department of Education wants this database so badly the Minister is willing to publicly defend defunding the Education of a quarter of the nation’s children in the run up to an election.

Not for the first time in Ireland’s sorry history of child abuse, protecting an institution has been put ahead of individual children’s rights.

You can read more about how the POD project has been going for the Minister and her Department here or you can read tons more about what its problems are on Tuppenceworth.ie