Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

The Department has commenced the phased introduction of the new public services card as part of the standard authentication framework environment, SAFE programme. The introduction of the card and the associated registration process has been piloted in a number of local offices around the country, including in Tullamore, Sligo and Kings Inns in Dublin. So far, approximately 6,000 cards have been issued on the pilot programme. From the Department's perspective, as well as combating identity fraud, the public services card will, in time, replace cards currently in use, such as the social services card and the free travel card, with a highly secure card which has a photograph and a signature.

This section requires that as part of the conditionality of applying for a social welfare payment, people must agree to have their photograph taken for the purposes of the card and be willing to supply a signature. We hope to issue a couple of hundred thousand cards this year. As the Senator knows, new claimants and jobseekers currently collect their money at their local post office and we plan to roll out the new cards for them in particular. When the new technology is fully operational, when claimants go into their post office with their card, the card will be put into the machine and the claimant's photograph will come up on screen for the post office assistant. This will be of a biometric standard and will provide counter staff with a reliable guide as to whether the claimant is the person on the card. This should be of significant assistance with combating identity fraud, which is a problem. Fraud might involve someone claiming for an Irish person who has gone abroad, a person claiming for an immigrant who has left or a case of multiple identities. In the past year, the Department has prosecuted a number of people for serious multiple identification fraud.

Identification fraud involves significant moneys. If someone builds up six or seven identities and claims social welfare for each of them, he or she defrauds the Department of a significant amount within a short period of time. This provision ensures that the new card comes into universal use over the next couple of years as it is rolled out. This will enable us to build up a more secure identification system. As regards the driver's licence, I understand this will be a separate card. However, the social and public services card will be available for use by other public services because it has the capacity to carry a significant amount of encrypted data. For instance, the use of the card for access to health services would strike me as being one such use. The card will probably be of value with regard to some areas of educational services, such as grants. The first step is to organise the issuing of the cards. This project has been discussed over a long period but I am happy to inform the House that the first roll-out began last September on a pilot basis. We hope to move to the issuing of significant numbers of cards in the near future.