Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Yes, we did. We looked at all the alternatives on offer and a great deal of care was taken. If we get this wrong, we will know all about it. I got a great deal of correspondence and read some commentary that An Post was going to win the tender, but a company called Capita won the tender. That company employs almost 1,000 people in Ireland already, and the unique identifier system that it has come up with is reckoned by the experts working on the project as the most effective and most suitable to our peculiar circumstance. We have issues relating to the Irish language, the number of families in one townland with the same name and with nicknames to distinguish them, and so on. The advice I have from the experts is that this unique identifier system is the best available with the most modern of technology. It is more modern than when this idea was examined seven or eight years ago, as the progress made since then has been significant. This should be a considerable success; at least I hope it will.