Fine Gael are saying that they do not know why their website was hacked. (as per Paschal Donohue’s appearance on Six One News this evening.)

In the statement that was sent this morning to Kevin Doyle, political correspondent in the Evening Herald, the hackers explained why. They also sent Kevin a copy of the database they had hacked of approx 3,800 entries which made up 2000 different email addresses.

‘Anonymous’ said it defaced the website because Fine Gael was being “terribly dishonest” and censoring comments from the public.

As proof, it issued the media with a database that includes the personal details of nearly 4,000 people who posted on the site.

In a statement, Anonymous said that Fine Gael were “a bunch of lying, deceitful conmen . . . We know as well as everyone else that all you people are interested in is your own back pocket.”

The database suggests that the Party had censored comments posted as part of what they had called the “biggest consultation” ever undertaken with the electorate.

Several posts calling on Fine Gael to “get rid” of Enda Kenny as leader never made it onto the website. The information also confirmed that Green TD Paul Gogarty was among those who commented on the site.

The hackers managed to access the names, email, phone numbers, constituency and the location from where they viewed the website.

Meanwhile Electionmall.com who host the website in Miami have called in the FBI and Fine Gael have called in the Gardai and are consulting with the Data Protection Commissioners who are investigating the attack.

Maybe Fine Gael will finally explain why the site was moved to the USA once and for all rather than the security reasons or Alan Shatter TD’s explanation last night that it was for ‘bandwidth and technical’ reasons.  I’m sure that Google, Facebook, Amazon and IBM to name a few multinationals located here have plenty of bandwidth or they would be off.