Former Health Minister Godgrey Farrugia was adamant that a statement he sent out to the press by email following his resignation on 29 March had somehow been ‘deleted’.

What Dr Farrugia did not directly say, but implied meant was that someone had tampered with his official government email address and stopped the letter getting out. Since then, through this newspaper’s sister publication, he asked the government for an explanation as to what happened. 

It is now nearly three weeks later and he has been left in the dark. Dr Farrugia is not the type to kick up a massive fuss and vent his anger through the media. He is more of a sit down, count to ten and take it from there type of person.

So if the good doctor thought there was a genuine possibility that his email could have been tampered, we would be quite inclined to believe him. He is not technically ignorant and therefore, questions do remain on what happened to this email.

The former minister sent the communication out to all media and it does indeed smell a bit fishy... in the 21st Century (in one of the most IT advanced countries in Europe) to think that this has happened.

Bearing in mind the appointment of the new Data Commissioner as well as the recent ‘Big Brother’ legal notice that would allow the government access to school children’s ability reports, we do have to wonder what is going on.

Of course, there could always be the possibility that there was  a technical fault and that the computer Dr Farrugia was using had a meltdown moment (as they all do from time to time). There could also be the possibility that Dr Farrugia made it up... but as we have already stated, this sounds highly unlikely.

The government has a duty to answer. The very least it could do is entertain Dr Farrugia with a straightforward answer. In remaining completely silent, the government is fuelling speculation and the seed of doubt has already been planted. Unfortunately, this has happened on more than one occasion and it has undermined the general public’s faith in the system. We livei n a world where people are becoming exceedingly aware of  the need to online privacy and data protection. The amount of data that is being collected about each and every one of us is startling. This not only by our national governments, but also local political parties, commercial entities and online companies and databases that are on an international level. George Orwell predicted all this in his classic 1984. While it is not our television screens that suck in the information, it is our own data footprint that we send out that is of most worry. Fuelling to people’s fears will not help, and the government should therefore clarify whether or not there was any tampering with Dr Farrugia’s email.