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The Department of Agriculture has apologised for sending nearly 15,000 text messages to farmers accidentally.
A spokesperson for the Department stated that the text messages were sent due to a technical error on Thursday 15 November.
A text message was sent in error today due to a system glitch
Texts seen by the Irish Farmers Journal typically inform farmers that they have received a BPS payment or to check their TAMS status.
The text is then followed by another text, with an apology from the Department reading: “Sincere apologies, a text message was sent in error today due to a system glitch. Your personal data was not compromised.”
In response to a request for more information on the issue, a Department spokesperson told the Irish Farmers Journal: “The Department of Agriculture issued text messages to farmers which, due to a technical issue, were simply a repeat of texts previously issued to each farmer.”
Their personal data was not in any way compromised
“Shortly thereafter, the Department texted affected farmers to explain the error.
“The Department is engaged with the service provider to establish the reason for the repeat text and prevent a recurrence.”
The spokesperson went on to assure farmers that “there was no data breach and that their personal data was not in any way compromised.”
Earlier this year, the Department was involved in an incident which caused some 759 farmers to be affected by a data breach relating to payments under the Knowledge Transfer (KT) programme.
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