Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The public services card and, importantly, its underpinning registration process are about providing people with public services in a safe and efficient manner. The underpinning registration process, which is called SAFE 2, involves a 15-minute visit to an INTREO office and is done just once. This process is used to establish a person's identity to a substantial level of assurance. This identity assurance level is the highest that is available to the public service. After going through SAFE 2 registration, the person gets a card and a MyGovID account. The card can be used for quick and safe access to services in the physical world, whereas MyGovID gives quick and safe access to public services in the online world.

Going through this registration process gives a number of benefits to the individual. It can protect a person from identity theft, reduce the potential for someone else to fraudulently access information, save time and effort in providing documentation that has been already provided to verify identity and allow a person to access more public services online. It also brings us into line with the increasing needs of the digital single market.

On the question of legality, provision for the information collected during SAFE 2 registration, how that information can be used and the production and use of the card is set out in the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005, specifically in section 263. The process, the data and the card have been discussed as part of the legislative process in the Oireachtas over multiple Bill amendments. Since the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005, successive Governments have discussed and progressed this initiative. The card has been promoted in successive public service reform plans. The matter has been subjected to a Comptroller and Auditor General study, published in the annual report of that body and examined by the PAC. It has gone through an exhaustive process of verification and debate to date, as it should. I have no plans at this stage to bring in further legislation in regard to the card because of the legislative foundation I have described.

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