Privacy protection for big data linking is discussed here in relation to the Central Statistics Office (CSO), Ireland's, big data linking project titled the 'Structure of Earnings Survey -Administrative Data Project' (SESADP). The result of the project was the creation of datasets and statistical outputs for the years 2011 to 2014 to meet Eurostat's annual earnings statistics requirements and the Structure of Earnings Survey (SES) Regulation. Record linking across the Census and various public

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... ector datasets enabled the necessary information to be acquired to meet the Eurostat earnings requirements. However, the risk of statistical disclosure (i.e. identifying an individual on the dataset) is high unless privacy and confidentiality safe-guards are built into the data matching process. This paper looks at the three methods of linking records on big datasets employed on the SESADP, and how to anonymise the data to protect the identity of the individuals, where potentially disclosive variables exist.