Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim buíochas, a Chathaoirligh. I thank the witnesses for appearing before the committee today. The committee has already gone into a great deal of the detail. I want to check a particular matter. I understand that we are talking about the electronic identification, ID, and the wallet. In fairness to Mr Lowry, he said that the whole idea for this to be successful is that it has to be a sellable entity that makes people’s lives easier and that it is easy to use by end-users, depending on with whom one is trying to interoperate with. Security and privacy then have to be perfect and we hope that we can ensure all of that.

Ms McCabe spoke about a one-year negotiation. At that stage we then have something that is closer to an end-deal or proposal with whatever questions remain, whereas the legislation is going to be carried out on the basis of the information known now over the next three to four months or so. How exactly is this and the interaction with the Commission going to work? What is the foreseen timeline on talking about something being an end product and when we can look at solutions? I accept what Mr. Lowry has said earlier in that there are certain technical issues that people will want to use, such as legacy technologies they have already invested in, whereas we are looking for something like the digital Covid certificate, DCC, where one has multiple DCCs, whether those relate to banking, passports or whatever else, on one’s phone.