Dear Inland Revenue Department,

In reference to my previous OIA question of the 8th August 2021 asking:

“Under what circumstances are the IRD permitted to change dates and/or times to date stamps of messages/correspondence sent through MYIR.”

IRD replied on the 3rd September 2021 stating:

“The Commissioner is not permitted to change received dates or times of messages or correspondence sent through MyIR unless it has been clearly identified the received date recorded is incorrect.”

Please answer the following questions:

Why did the Commissioner change the dates or correspondence three times over three weeks?

If the Commissioner denies responsibility for this, have the IRD have been compromised and is the IRD working with the GCSB to bring the perpetrators to account?

Please contact me directly via email for the supporting evidence of these date changes.

Yours faithfully,

Amanda Murtagh

Dear Governance & Ministerial Services,

Good Afternoon,

Thank you for your response.

Please find below links to Dropbox which shows the changes to dates made to correspondence sent via myIR.

I have redacted Personal Information other than my account name for Privacy reasons.

Original Correspondence sent dated 16.07.21 – the correct date of correspondence sent.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7iuddad5sfr9sd...

Change of sent date to 31.07.21
https://www.dropbox.com/s/zmyafksvburmmw...

Change of date to 02.08.21
https://www.dropbox.com/s/2bdliijk2ri4bu...

Yours sincerely,

Amanda Murtagh

Dear IRD,

In reference to changing of correspondence dates, IRD states on the record, this is due to queue sorting issues that would be corrected when IRD myIR will undergo an update later this year that will prevent future correspondence dates from updating based on queue movement.

The above would be believable if there had not been 2 other subsequent updates to this file. The first had no date change. The third had no date change. The 4th was changed reflecting point 1 above. There are inconsistencies regarding your explanation in point 1 above and although your letter stated that the systems are controlled completely separate and have no financial impact on customers, they do have an audit impact on customers especially when there are inconsistencies in the updates of these files and an apparent anomaly to the IRD explanation in point 1 above.

I refer to my original OIA questions:

1. Why did the Commissioner change the dates and correspondence times?

2. If the Commissioner denies responsibility for this, has the IRD been compromised?

2(a). If the IRD has been compromised, is the IRD working with the GCSB to bring the perpetrators to account?

Yours sincerely,

Amanda Murtagh