Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

We have been working with the various transport companies to devise a series of on-the-spot checks. We have a facility whereby a travel card which seems to be fraudulent - some of the ones I have seen are merely cheap photocopies in a plastic wallet - can be checked to verify the authenticity of the number. There has been quite a lot of that type of activity on several of the transport services in recent times, including the Luas. As we achieve the roll-out of the public services card and the related technology in the transport companies, there should be a significant easing of that problem.