Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 20 October 2016
Public Accounts Committee
2015 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Department of Social Protection
Chapter 9 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 10 - Roll-out of the Public Services Card
Social Insurance Fund 2015
9:00 am
Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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They get what they are entitled to, yet we have to read these headlines. Obviously, departmental officials are not responsible for them but the reporters are basing them on what they heard from Revenue and the Department of Social Protection. Gardaí are on the streets of Galway stopping cars. The report says they are stopping 4X4s because of cheaters. That is an unhelpful message and I might come back to it later.
The roll-out of the public services card seems to have been an unmitigated disaster and I choose those words reluctantly. Following expenditure of €60 million, everybody still does not have a card. Is that correct? A total of 3 million cards were to be rolled out by 2013 but, in 2016, 2.2 million have issued. That is a huge problem. Ms O'Donoghue has given reasons-----