Editorial: The PSNI data breach was more than a wake-up call, it was a grievous blunder and major scandal that put life at risk

There is so much news of bad governance, blunders and wasted money that it has been easy to forget what happened in the PSNI data breach over the summer.

The details of almost 10,000 officers were published in response to a Freedom of Information request in August, including the surname and initial of every employee and the unit in which they work. Among the disastrous leaks was the names of those officers who work with the intelligence services.

It was as grievous a blunder as it is possible to imagine. Information such sensitivity that, if divulged, would put lives at risk. And guess who got their blood-soaked claws on it? Dissident Irish republican terrorists, who have murdered police and would love to murder more, above all Catholic officers to scare them out of the PSNI, as they did Catholic RUC so they could call both forces sectarian.

There was a price to be paid within the police for this unpardonable data release – Simon Byrne ultimately resigned, having already showed himself unfit for the role by pandering to Irish republicans in the Bobby Storey IRA funeral mass Covid breach and then the Ormeau Road Covid breach.

Yet there is already almost a blur to this incident. After the release of a report into the breach by a City of London Police commissioner Jon Boutcher, the new PSNI chief constable, described it as a “wake-up call to everyone”.

Almost half of PSNI officers have sought support after this calamity. It is a wake-up call. Are NHS officials, for example, thinking about how secure is confidential patient information they hold? But it is more than a wake-up. Work places around Northern Ireland, indeed the UK, need to strengthen the increasingly unfashionable idea that sloppy practice will lead to workplace sanction, and errors in which life is put at risk will lead to dismissals at high levels, maybe criminal proceeding.