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Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Employment Affairs and Social Protection
Chapter 12 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 13 - Timeliness of Income Support Claim Processing
Chapter 14 - Customer Service - Development of Income Support Application Forms (7 Nov 2019)

...may be of interest to the committee or which have already been signalled as being of interest. These relate to the status of the Social Insurance Fund, Brexit, service performance statistics and the public services card. The Committee will note from the 2018 accounts that the Social Insurance Fund appears to be in robust financial health. Expenditure during the year of €10...

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Employment Affairs and Social Protection
Chapter 12 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 13 - Timeliness of Income Support Claim Processing
Chapter 14 - Customer Service - Development of Income Support Application Forms (7 Nov 2019)

...we want to move in this regard. Currently, 70% of claims are taken by post and 30% in person. My ambition and that of the Department is for half of claims to be taken online. Going back to the public services card, that is a critical enabler of that because when somebody is applying for a service online, he or she can see the eligibility of his or her existing claim status and his or...

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Employment Affairs and Social Protection
Chapter 12 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 13 - Timeliness of Income Support Claim Processing
Chapter 14 - Customer Service - Development of Income Support Application Forms (7 Nov 2019)

Shane Cassells: In his lengthy opening statement of six and a half pages, Mr. McKeon dedicated two and a half pages to the public services card. In the periodic report published by the committee in March, we noted that the Department informed this committee that we had helped to identify approximately 220 cases of fraud. This resulted in approximately €4.2 million of savings. Can Mr. McKeon inform...

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Employment Affairs and Social Protection
Chapter 12 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 13 - Timeliness of Income Support Claim Processing
Chapter 14 - Customer Service - Development of Income Support Application Forms (7 Nov 2019)

Mr. John McKeon: One of my colleagues can get the information. I do not have it with me. What I can say is that the control savings on the public services card come to €10 million. That is partly why I sent out details of some of the cases. Members will see that with regard to the value of some of the cases we circulated, the sum in a case involving one character was...

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Employment Affairs and Social Protection
Chapter 12 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 13 - Timeliness of Income Support Claim Processing
Chapter 14 - Customer Service - Development of Income Support Application Forms (7 Nov 2019)

Shane Cassells: ...that caught my eye was Mr. McKeon's statement that the total fully allocated costs of the project to date come to €67.7 million but a large portion of these costs would have been incurred even if the public services card had not been introduced. Mr. McKeon stated that this was because the Department always sought to authenticate the identity of people claiming its services in any...

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Employment Affairs and Social Protection
Chapter 12 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 13 - Timeliness of Income Support Claim Processing
Chapter 14 - Customer Service - Development of Income Support Application Forms (7 Nov 2019)

Shane Cassells: The other elephant in the room is the fact it is being examined in respect of data protection issues. The Data Protection Commission said the cost of its initial investigation into the public services card was almost €200,000, comprising €130,000 internal and €66,000 external. Almost €200,000 has been spent investigating it, again fuelling people's frustration...

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Employment Affairs and Social Protection
Chapter 12 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 13 - Timeliness of Income Support Claim Processing
Chapter 14 - Customer Service - Development of Income Support Application Forms (7 Nov 2019)

Catherine Murphy: ...well here. I apologise if I have missed something where Mr. McKeon has given an answer. I note the point about some of the online payments and the need for an identifier. I will come back to the public services card after I have asked a few other questions. I acknowledge that some of the payments made online, such as maternity benefit, are very efficient. We should acknowledge that...

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Employment Affairs and Social Protection
Chapter 12 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 13 - Timeliness of Income Support Claim Processing
Chapter 14 - Customer Service - Development of Income Support Application Forms (7 Nov 2019)

Catherine Murphy: Okay. In today's correspondence we received a reply from Mr. McKeon on the public services card. It included an assessment of the public services card project which outlines what is or is not done and what stage everything is at. The benefits realisation plan does not appear to have been assessed. The organisation's capacity to undertake the project does not seem to have had a full...

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Employment Affairs and Social Protection
Chapter 12 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 13 - Timeliness of Income Support Claim Processing
Chapter 14 - Customer Service - Development of Income Support Application Forms (7 Nov 2019)

..., in 2016. There was no single business case document. Looking back, one sees that there should have been, but there was not. The reason for that was explained at the time and related to how the public services card project had evolved going back to 1993. There are difficulties involved in estimating benefits in particular. Most of the elements of a business case were in place in...

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Employment Affairs and Social Protection
Chapter 12 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 13 - Timeliness of Income Support Claim Processing
Chapter 14 - Customer Service - Development of Income Support Application Forms (7 Nov 2019)

Mr. John McKeon: The public services card commenced roll-out in 2011. The myGovId is only under way two or three years such that there is a catch-up to be done. It is purely a timing issue.

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Employment Affairs and Social Protection
Chapter 12 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 13 - Timeliness of Income Support Claim Processing
Chapter 14 - Customer Service - Development of Income Support Application Forms (7 Nov 2019)

Catherine Murphy: I want to return to the public services card. On the issue of biometrics, a couple of weeks ago, the committee received correspondence that indicated that there was funding of, I think, less than €300,000 in the accounts - I cannot recall the particular year - and it specifically identified biometrics. This is an issue on which the Department is in discussion with the Data Protection...

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Employment Affairs and Social Protection
Chapter 12 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 13 - Timeliness of Income Support Claim Processing
Chapter 14 - Customer Service - Development of Income Support Application Forms (7 Nov 2019)

Mr. John McKeon: I will clarify it for the Deputy. In public commentary three different things tend to get conflated. For example, people have said that the public services card contains biometric data. We are very clear that it does not. There is no biometric data in the photograph or on the card or chip. We are very clear on that. Second, people we say we share biometric data. We...

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Employment Affairs and Social Protection
Chapter 12 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 13 - Timeliness of Income Support Claim Processing
Chapter 14 - Customer Service - Development of Income Support Application Forms (7 Nov 2019)

David Cullinane: I welcome Mr. McKeon and his officials. I have a few questions on the public services card. Mr. McKeon might be aware we had the Data Protection Commissioner before us a number of weeks ago and we put questions to her on this issue as well. She published a report a number of months ago and made a number of directions to the Department on foot of that report. There were three high-level...

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Employment Affairs and Social Protection
Chapter 12 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 13 - Timeliness of Income Support Claim Processing
Chapter 14 - Customer Service - Development of Income Support Application Forms (7 Nov 2019)

Mr. John McKeon: No, we do not, and there are reasons for that. It is not a decision the Department took lightly. We took it on strong advice from the Attorney General. The public services card delivers a lot of benefits to administration and customer service. It would be reckless and foolhardy if we were not to challenge those findings on the basis of the advice we received.

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Employment Affairs and Social Protection
Chapter 12 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 13 - Timeliness of Income Support Claim Processing
Chapter 14 - Customer Service - Development of Income Support Application Forms (7 Nov 2019)

David Cullinane: ...Commissioner referred to this too. The Department's response to the Data Protection Commissioner at that point was that it represented a collateral undermining of Mr. McCarthy's report on the public services card. To be clear, that would not be Mr. McCarthy's view?

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Employment Affairs and Social Protection
Chapter 12 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 13 - Timeliness of Income Support Claim Processing
Chapter 14 - Customer Service - Development of Income Support Application Forms (7 Nov 2019)

Catherine Connolly: I did not want to get into the public services card and an enforcement notice will probably be served on the Department. I welcome Mr. McKeon's openness and accountability in the general presentation but it seemed to desert him with the public services card matter. It is just a comment. We have already heard about the collateral undermining of the Comptroller and Auditor General and the...

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Employment Affairs and Social Protection
Chapter 12 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 13 - Timeliness of Income Support Claim Processing
Chapter 14 - Customer Service - Development of Income Support Application Forms (7 Nov 2019)

Catherine Connolly: .... The issue of privacy, where a case is pending, is not a matter for discussion today but there are many other issues, such as function creep and no overall plan. The commissioner states that the public services card project has many moving parts and that the complexity of logic and terminology attaching to that makes any analysis, legal or otherwise, challenging. It was to start out as...

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Employment Affairs and Social Protection
Chapter 12 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 13 - Timeliness of Income Support Claim Processing
Chapter 14 - Customer Service - Development of Income Support Application Forms (7 Nov 2019)

...with a lot of what has been said. I would be happy to go into greater detail but I do not know if it would serve any purpose. I disagree vehemently with a lot of it. The policy in respect of the public services card was set out very clearly in 1998 and anyone who reads the legislation or the debates of that time, or about the changes made in 2004 or 2005, will see that the policy has...

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Employment Affairs and Social Protection
Chapter 12 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 13 - Timeliness of Income Support Claim Processing
Chapter 14 - Customer Service - Development of Income Support Application Forms (7 Nov 2019)

Imelda Munster: The Data Protection Commissioner asked the Department to delete illegally retained data relating to the public services card as of 5 September 2019. Has the Department done this?

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Employment Affairs and Social Protection
Chapter 12 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 13 - Timeliness of Income Support Claim Processing
Chapter 14 - Customer Service - Development of Income Support Application Forms (7 Nov 2019)

Imelda Munster: I refer to the latter part of the programme; the public services card and the concerns the Data Protection Commissioner has flagged. The Department did not draw up a thorough business case. Mr. McKeon has said it was not a requirement back in the day, but the Department would have been aware that it was a fundamental requirement to justify anything of this scale and type, as the Comptroller...