Memorandum of Understanding between Central Statistics Office and Tusla in relation to children in care and school attendance data

Table of Contents

List of abbreviations

This Memorandum of Understanding is made on the 7th May 2024 

Between 

Tusla – Child and Family Agency, 

The Brunel Building, Heuston South Quarter, 
Saint John’s Road West, Dublin 8, D08 X01F 

And 

The Central Statistics Office, 
Skehard Road, Cork, T12 X00E. 

1. Establishment of the Parties

1.1 Tusla was established in January 2014 under the Child and Family Agency Act 2013.

1.2 The Central Statistics Office (CSO) was first established in 1949 and was subsequently established on a Statutory Basis in 1994, pursuant to the Statistics Act, 1993.

2. The Role of the Parties

2.1 The roles of the parties are summarised below:

2.2 Tusla:

• Tusla - the Child and Family Agency - supports and promotes the development, welfare and protection of children, and supports and encourages the effective functioning of families.
• It also provides information and advice to the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth on matters relating to the agency’s areas of responsibility.
• Tusla has a number of statutory obligations under various Acts including but not limited to the Children First Act 2015, Child Care 1991 and the Education (Welfare) Act 2000.

2.3 The CSO:

• The functions of the Office are the collection, compilation, extraction and dissemination for statistical purposes of information relating to economic, social and general activities and conditions in the State.
• The Office has the authority to co-ordinate official statistics compiled by public authorities to ensure, in particular, adherence to statistical standards and the use of appropriate classifications.
• The Office has the authority to assess the statistical potential of the records maintained by public authorities and, in conjunction with them, to ensure that this potential is realised in so far as resources permit.

These functions are as detailed in Section 10 of the Statistics Act, 1993.

3. Context and background

3.1 The Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (DCEDIY) contacted the CSO in February 2019 about measuring attainment and attendance of children in care (CiC) and queried if the CSO could facilitate the compiling and analysis of such a project. Subsequently, the CSO prepared to request data suitable to carry out the required statistical analysis.

3.2 Through joint discussions between the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (DCEDIY), Tusla and the CSO, it had been established that data from the Tusla Educational Support Services, as well as data from the National Childcare Information System (subsequently migrated to the Tusla Case Management, Child Protection and Alternative Care system in 2023) was relevant for the statistical analysis.

3.3 In September 2022, the Chief Executive of Tusla received a request from the Director General of the CSO, in accordance with Section 30 of the Statistics Act, 1993, to provide data on children in care (CiC) from the Tusla Educational Support Services (TESS), as well as data from the National Childcare Information System (NCCIS), to the CSO. Section 30 of the Statistics Act, 1993 gives a statutory power to the CSO to deliver a notice of request to any public authority to allow the CSO access to or copies of any records in its charge.

3.4 During 2023 the data on children in care in Tusla’s NCCIS system was migrated to the Tusla Case Management, Child Protection and Alternative Care system (TCM-CPAC). This change of IT system resulted in changes to the entity and attribute names of the variables requested but did not alter the underlying data covered by the Section 30 request.

3.5 This data, hereafter referred to as the CSO-TCM-CPAC (formerly CSO-NCCIS) and CSO-TESS data, is to be provided to the CSO by Tusla. The ‘CSO-TCM-CPAC’ and ‘CSO-TESS’ data are minimised extracts from Tusla’s TCM-CPAC and TESS databases as outlined in 5.3.

3.6 This Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) refers to the provision of the data referred to above (‘CSO-TCM-CPAC’ and ‘CSO-TESS’ data) from Tusla to the CSO.

4. Purpose of the Memorandum of Understanding

4.1 The purpose of this MoU is to clarify the roles and responsibilities of, as well as the areas of cooperation between, CSO and Tusla with regard to the transmission and use of the CSO-TCM-CPAC and CSO-TESS data.

4.2 This agreement is a MoU and is not intended to create binding or legal obligations on either party. The MoU is entered into on the understanding that it is subordinate to the relevant legislation governing each body.

4.3 This MoU also sets out a shared understanding of the parties in relation to data protection issues that may arise and roles relating to the compilation, transfer and use of this data. The processing of personal data of data subjects by Tusla and the CSO is governed by the Statistics Act, 1993 and the Data Protection Acts 1988-2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation.

4.4 The MoU provides for the planned outputs of the statistical use of the data, namely the publication of projects on the aggregated statistics on the educational attendance and attainment of CiC.

5. The TCM-CPAC and TESS data

5.1 Tusla acknowledges the request from the CSO, in accordance with Section 30 of the Statistics Act, 1993, to provide TCM-CPAC (CiC component), previously the NCCIS data, and TESS data to the CSO and will provide that data, in so far as it is compatible with relevant legislation.

5.2 The data extracts from Tusla will be used by the CSO for the production of Official Statistics, in line with its legislative mandate. The data is supplied in the first instance to contribute to the statistical analysis of the educational attainment and attendance of children in care. The CSO will notify Tusla and DCEDIY of its intention to publish statistical outputs using the CSO-TCM-CPAC or CSO-TESS data. This will ensure a joint understanding of the possible interrelation of statistics produced in the three organisations.

5.3 The TCM-CPAC extract is to include data on children who are currently in care or were in care since April 2018 only. The TESS data includes all children (including children not in care) that had school absences over 20 days in the academic year 2017/2018 or 2018/2019, and additional academic years if available. The whole TESS dataset is requested, for the years signalled, to allow comparative analysis of children in care with all children in education.

5.4 Tusla and the CSO, as compilers of statistics, have obligations under their respective legal frameworks in the production of Official Statistics.

5.5 The CSO shall ensure that all CSO-TCM-CPAC or CSO-TESS data requested is necessary and proportionate, having regard to the statistical outputs to be produced.

5.6 Any proposed change to the data that Tusla collects, which the CSO has requested under the Statistics Act, 1993 (and detailed in the Data Necessity and Proportionality Assessment forwarded to Tusla from the CSO) shall be communicated to the CSO in a timely fashion.

5.7 The CSO shall ensure that all linking of Tusla data with other data sources, both CSO and non-CSO, will be carried out in accordance with the CSO Data Protocol and the CSO’s high quality standards, while Tusla will continuously assess the quality of the data provided. Any additional uses of CSO-TCM-CPAC or CSO-TESS data by the CSO will be notified to Tusla and DCEDIY.

6. Responsibilities in relation to the transmission of the CSO-TCM-CPAC and TESS Data

6.1 The data controller for personal data provided to the CSO is Tusla. When the CSO-TCM-CPAC and CSO-TESS data is transferred to the CSO, the CSO becomes the data controller. It follows then that it is the responsibility of the CSO to report any data breaches relating to the CSO-TCM-CPAC and CSO-TESS data, once it is in their possession.

6.2 In the event of a breach relating to CSO-TCM-CPAC or CSO-TESS data the CSO will inform the Data Protection Officer of Tusla. This notification will be made within 24 hours. Additionally, the CSO Liaison Officer (as specified in Sec. 9 of this document) will notify the Tusla Liaison Officer. In addition, the CSO will refer to their own data breach procedures and report the breach to the Data Protection Commission as appropriate. Tusla will not be held responsible for any loss, damage or injury caused as a result of such a breach.

6.3 In the event of a breach relating to CSO-TCM-CPAC or CSO-TESS data the CSO will inform the Data Protection Officer of Tusla in advance, of any decision to issue a public statement in relation to the breach. Similarly, Tusla will inform the CSO through the Data Protection Officer of the CSO, in advance, of any decision to issue a public statement in relation to the breach.

7. Legal background

7.1 Transfer and processing of the data shall be done in accordance with the Statistics Act, 1993, the Data Protection Acts 1988-2018, the General Data Protection Regulation, the Data Protection Act 2018, EU law in accordance with the CSO’s Code of Practice, in particular its protocol on data matching where one or more datasets originate from outside of the CSO.

7.2 The transfer and processing of the data is covered by, inter alia, the following provisions:

• Section 13 of the Statistics Act, 1993, concerning the statistical independence of the Director General of the CSO;
• Sections 30 and 31 of the Statistics Act, 1993, concerning the statistical independence of the Director General of the CSO;
• Sections 32 and 33 of the Statistics Act, 1993, concerning the protection of information;
• Section 24(2) of the Statistics Act, 1993 (as amended by Section 178 of the Data Protection Act), concerning the provision of information to the CSO;
• Article 6(1)(c) of the General Data Protection Regulation;
• Article 6(1)(e) of the General Data Protection Regulation; 
• Article 9(2)(j) of the General Data Protection Regulation;
• Article 89 of the General Data Protection Regulation;
• Section 42 of the Data Protection Act 2018;
• Section 54 of the Data Protection Act 2018;
• Section 11(2) of the Child Care Act (1991, revised 2021).

8. Transfer, security and data storage

8.1 Further to the initial pilot resulting in a 2023 publication on CiC, subsequent extracts of data will be requested.

8.2 The CSO-TCM-CPAC and CSO-TESS data will be retained, securely stored and processed by the CSO in accordance with CSO and ADC Data Policies. The CSO and Tusla shall maintain the appropriate infrastructure to ensure the secure transfer of data between the two Organisations.

8.3 CSO will retain this data to ensure that statistics can be replicated over time, to facilitate longitudinal studies and time series analysis and to ensure historic statistics can be generated for new data needs as they arise. The CSO is continuously evaluating the statistical requirements to balance the interests of data subjects with the requirements for official statistics and retention periods. As part of this evaluation, recommendations may be made during periodic reviews (annually or at the request of either party) in relation to the retention of data. 

8.4 Tusla will provide the CSO with the CSO-TCM-CPAC and CSO-TESS data in an agreed format. All data files shall be accompanied by the relevant metadata.

8.5 In accordance with CSO policies on the control of data the CSO will not copy the CSO-TCM-CPAC and CSO-TESS data onto removable media (including laptop computers).

9. Data Liaison Officer

9.1 The CSO shall appoint a Liaison Officer as the main point of contact with Tusla; this role shall encompass a Data Custodian function, with the responsibility for the management and use of Tusla data by the CSO. Tusla shall likewise appoint a Liaison Officer with the CSO.

10. Duration and Review of the Memorandum of Understanding

10.1 This MoU shall be published on Tusla’s (www.tusla.ie) and the CSO’s website (www.cso.ie).

10.2 This MoU will remain in force until a new one is entered into, and/or both CSO and Tusla agree to revoke it. Depending on events, this MoU may be amended, subject to the mutual agreement of Tusla and CSO.

10.3 This agreement may be reviewed at any time at the request of either party. Any changes to the MoU shall only be made with the mutual agreement of Tusla and the CSO.