No More Easy Access to Records Vault at Vital Stats

Michael Peyrefitte

According to AG Peyrefitte, several persons, including accused murderer William ‘Danny’ Mason may have been able to acquire birth certificates illegally when other employees of the Vital Statistics Unit had access to the computer system containing those records.  Since then, those with access to the records vault have been limited to only two persons.  Along with Assistant Registrar Andy Gilharry, the attorney general explained what has been done to restrict access.

Michael Peyrefitte, Attorney General

“It’s been limiting the access of the people to the computer.  It’s very difficult to go back in a book that’s from 1973 and write with fresh ink to make it appear that that’s a new entry and as an old entry when it’s clearly a new entry.  For most of those situations where you had people who got it fraudulently, it was through the computer system.  But we have limited the amount of people who can access the system and not only that, we have also ID’ed so we can see who went on that system to manipulate any document or to touch any document to that effect.”

Andy Gilharry

Andy Gilharry, Assistant Registrar, Vital Statistics Unit

“The only thing I can add is that no one else but the deputy and I, only our handwriting is valid in those books as of last year, so no one else can just enter that vault with a regular pen and just write on that.”