Ms Niamh O'Donoghue:

Yes, at the time we were developing the card, we were operating on the basis that potentially the registration processes would be carried out by the Department, but that was by no means an absolute assumption. It was also possible that this would have been contracted out to another tenderer if we had felt that was appropriate. However, when we got into full production of the card and put the infrastructure in place to register people, the production volumes we managed to deliver were very much in keeping with what we envisaged in the original plan for the card. Over a three to four-year timespan, we will have issued 3 million cards, which was our intention in 2009 but for the things that overcame us.