Sir, – The Primary Online Database will help primary schools run more efficiently and provide the Department of Education with valuable statistical data. However, collecting too much information about children unnecessarily exposes them to risk.
Teachers certainly need to know which children will be making their First Communion. But it is harder to make the case for a centralised government database containing the ethnicity and religion of every child in the country.
The use of each child’s PPS number as the primary key compounds the risk, since this number will follow the child for a lifetime.
The labels we attach now to children may stay with them their whole lives. The value to the State of such data must be carefully weighed against the potential costs to the State’s most precious resource. – Yours, etc,
COLIN MANNING,
Lecturer in Computing,
Cork Institute
of Technology,
Bishopstown,
Cork.