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

Ms Niamh O'Donoghue:

Yes, at the time we were developing the card, we were operating on the basis that potentially the registration processes would be carried out by the Department, but that was by no means an absolute assumption. It was also possible that this would have been contracted out to another tenderer if we had felt that was appropriate. However, when we got into full production of the card and put the infrastructure in place to register people, the production volumes we managed to deliver were very much in keeping with what we envisaged in the original plan for the card. Over a three to four-year timespan, we will have issued 3 million cards, which was our intention in 2009 but for the things that overcame us.