The following is the full text of a statement released by Fine Gael this morning in the aftermath of its website’s overnight security breach, which has led to the personal data of almost 2,000 people being compromised.

During the past week Fine Gael received thousands of comments from supporters all over the country. In fact, we experienced an unprecedented amount of site traffic over the previous week.

Last night, we regret to report, the Fine Gael website was professionally hacked. The group that participated in this attack called themselves the Anonymous Group. This group has been associated with the Wikileaks investigation and attacks on companies such as Visa, MasterCard and Amazon. The attack occurred from 8.00pm to 12.00am last night.

We were alerted this morning that the Anonymous Group was able to secure the database of the information submitted by members of the public during the previous week. This affected just under 2,000 subscribers.

As a result we have now taken the necessary action to report this “hacking crime” to the proper authorities including the Data Protection Commissioner and the Gardaí. This morning the Party has emailed each of the individuals who submitted their comments and contact data (emails, IP addresses and mobile phone numbers) to the site to notify them of this event. We deeply regret any inconvenience that has been caused to them.

A holding page has also been posted on the Fine Gael website www.finegael.ie while the matter is being resolved.

We very much welcome the support and interest that the public have shown in sending their views and comments to our website. We will keep the public informed on this situation and we look forward to being back online as soon as possible.