Ms Niamh O'Donoghue:

It certainly contributed to the delay in reaching production capacity. Obviously, the Department faces the ongoing cost of having registration centres in place. The benefits of this approach from our perspective accrue not only from fraud savings but also from administrative efficiency and the improved customer experience. It is hugely beneficial for customers to be able to use the same token to access a range of services across the public service. Those benefits will increase. We know from our engagement with other public service providers that the functionality of the card and the information on which it is based will increase dramatically in the years to come.