I did respond to the email set out earlier this week, where the Dept of Education said… Some words, I guess would be a fair description.
For the sake of completeness, here was my reply;
Dear Mr Xxx,
Further to your email below, I make reply, adopting the numbering therein.
1.) This has no relevance to the legality or otherwise of the threat to withhold funding except insofar as it is an acceptance that this threat is an unenforceable assertion of a power the Minister does not have.
2.) Without any cited basis for this bare assertion it does not constitute a meaningful response on this point.
3.) This statement is not relevant to the complaint I have made. However, I note that the Department has cited the prior approval of the Data Protection Commissioner for measures the Commissioner’s office have subsequently found to be in breach of the Data Protection Acts and the Data Protection Directive. For this reason, I do not consider such an assertion to form any conclusive proof of compliance.
Please note that, as I notified you would happen in prior correspondence, this matter has been referred to the Data Protection Commissioner and I have already been contacted by an official acknowledging receipt of same. I will therefore be forwarding this exchange to that office to form part of their investigation.
As a parent, I would like to add that it is regrettable that the Department of Education continues to wrongheadedly attempt to force implementation of this project without responding meaningfully to the conceptual errors that have been repeatedly identified.
Your faithfully,
Simon McGarr
