Mr. Tim Duggan:

The Chairman asked about interaction with other Departments. In my opening statement I said the PPS number was available to bodies known as "specified bodies". They are specified by being included in the Schedule to the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005. The Chairman can see that the list runs to over two pages. He will also see that No. 2 on the list is local authorities and that, accordingly, they have the legislative power to collect and use PPS numbers, as do Revenue and any other Department.

We put together the public service identity dataset, including all those things I listed such as name, address, date of birth, place of birth and PPS number. These are made available through a system called the "single customer view". Local authorities have an entitlement to access that system to verify the data. We also have a death event notification system which takes death information registered with the GRO and disseminates it through the single customer view infrastructure to any public body, including local authorities, that is entitled to the information and subscribes to the system. Local authorities have the ability to check and validate PPS numbers and all public service identities offered to them by an individual and can check if people have died and have been registered as such.