31 December 2007
Failure to finalise a complaint against M.C.L. 

I received a complaint from a data subject in February 2007 regarding the failure of M.C.L. to respond to an access request made by him in November 2006. The right of access to personal data is one of the key fundamental rights conferred on a data subject by the Data Protection Acts. The Acts provide that access requests must be complied with by a data controller “as soon as may be and in any event not more than 40 days” after receipt of the request. My Office commenced an investigation which lasted for a period of some seven months. 

During our investigation, we received correspondence from a firm of Dublin-based solicitors acting for M.C.L. stating that its client had responded to the data subject’s access request in early May 2007. However, the data subject subsequently informed us that some critical documents had not been included in the response he had received to his access request. Accordingly, our investigation continued on the basis that M.C.L appeared to have failed to comply in full with the data subject’s access request. We communicated further with M.C.L solicitors regarding the matter of the outstanding documents. 

At the end of August 2007, my Office received correspondence from these solicitors in which they stated that their client had furnished the data subject with any documentation held by them. They went on to state that their client’s instructions were that any further documentation that the data subject considered to be outstanding “must have been mislaid during the process of moving offices as they have moved offices three times in the intervening period.” The solicitors concluded their letter by informing my Office that all further correspondence on this matter should be directed to the registered office of M.C.L.. 

My Office was very concerned at this turn of events and it was particularly cognisant of the fact that the outstanding documents could be of considerable importance to the data subject in relation to proving outstanding financial matters of a very significant nature. Accordingly, in order to investigate the matter further, one of my authorised officers, using the powers conferred by Section 24 of the Data Protection Acts, visited an address in D at which the company was registered with the Irish Financial Services Regulatory Authority (We had previously found out that the company was not trading at the address at which it was registered with the Companies Registration Office). Despite three separate attempts to gain access to the premises in D, the authorised officer failed to gain access or to make contact with any member of staff of M.C.L. at the premises. Following this, my Office communicated again with the solicitors for M.C.L. to which we subsequently received a reply which stated that “we have been unable to obtain further instructions from our client and we are now closing our file. As a result, we will be no longer representing them in relation to this matter.” 

By way of a further attempt to communicate with M.C.L., my Office sent a letter by registered post in early October 2007 to the company’s D address. This letter was returned by An Post to my Office in November 2007 with an indication from An Post that nobody was available at the address on the delivery date and that it was not subsequently collected at the mail centre. 

Unfortunately, despite extensive efforts by my Office to make direct contact with M.C.L., we were unable to do so. As our investigation was effectively stymied, we found ourselves in the unsatisfactory situation of being unable to pursue the complaint to finality, despite the best possible use of the powers available to me. In the circumstances, my Office has communicated with the Financial Regulator in relation to the details of this case.