It emerged last night that a laptop containing close to 175,000 patient records belonging to the Irish Blood Transfusion Service was stolen in New York. The news comes within weeks of Labour TD Ruairi Quinn warning that data protection in Irish government departments needed better controls. He revealed nearly 100 notebook and desktop PCs have been lost or stolen from Irish government departments over the past five years, along with 14 BlackBerry smartphones and 11 portable media devices. In recent weeks, Pat Moran of Ernst & Young’s Risk Advisory Services practice told Siliconrepublic.com that the prevalence of laptop theft was...