Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The choice of words was not great. I reread the report of the Data Protection Commissioner. I acknowledge that Mr. McKeon has only been in the job for two years. The issue of privacy, where a case is pending, is not a matter for discussion today but there are many other issues, such as function creep and no overall plan. The commissioner states that the public services card project has many moving parts and that the complexity of logic and terminology attaching to that makes any analysis, legal or otherwise, challenging. It was to start out as an enabler for services, which would have been great, but the card, as a physical piece of infrastructure, serves little purpose today. There is an ongoing shifting of policy and direction relating to the public services card which has led to what the commissioner says is a fragmented and insufficient approach. There are many and significant deficits in logic and consistency. This project was rolled out at a cost of €67 million with, according to what Mr. McKeon has said, savings of €30 million, which we will look at in due course. There is no business case, no review and proper analysis, so nobody could stand over that.