Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Since 1992 we have been talking about the euro pass and the idea of a European identity card. The British were aghast at the concept of it. It was said it would bring down the government. There is a touch of that about some of this and how possible it is. On balance, having listened to the last two hours there is a lot of potential for it to go well but it requires buy-in. Everyone said we would not do chip and pin and now all we see are people tapping cards and phones. People are not carrying cash even though only a couple of years ago when I, along with the Chairman, was a member of the finance committee the chief executive of Bank of Ireland said at the time that Irish people like cash and want to have cash in their pocket. Now most businesses tell me they are taking in a fraction of the amount of cash compared to pre-pandemic times.

The public service card was voluntary but mandatory. It was voluntary if one wanted to have one but it was mandatory if one wanted to get social welfare benefits. There were certain aspects to it. There is always a fine line when it comes to data sharing. I benefited from being on the finance committee where we discussed such legislation in the last term. Equally, there are issues with freedom of information and GDPR. There are a lot of conflicts going on. I am not necessarily sure that I subscribe to Senator Craughwell's conspiracy theories on scam calls. I presume his 5G improved once he got his vaccines sorted.

In terms of where we are going with this, do we have a timeline? There will be a year of consultation. I anticipate that just like metro and lots of other things it can be delayed. The roll-out of the digital Covid cert was very rapid. When will we see this? Is there an appetite right across the EU, including the Commission and member states, to say that this is positive and to get a verifiable EID so that people can have their driving licences and passports, open a bank account, get car insurance and properly prove their identity while also having protections in place to ensure that people in Revenue do not know about people's health data and the people in the health system do not know about people's Revenue data and so on? I do not believe they are challenges. I bring my digital Covid cert to a restaurant and staff can verify it is valid without knowing much else about me.

When might we as consumers and members of the public see a tangible benefit from this? I appreciate that there are 27 countries involved, but do the witnesses have any idea of the timeline involved?