Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick County, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Yes. Amendments Nos. 6, 7 and 13 provide that public bodies cannot ask for a public services card or access a public service identity as the exclusive basis by which a person may verify his or her identity in order to conduct a transaction or access a service. It is crucial to the construction of the legislation that the public service identity includes some of the following: PPS number; name; address; date of birth; place of birth; and any other data that can be used to identify a person. The advice of the Attorney General is that any of these data that are collected are public service identity data. These amendments mean that the Government would have to provide services to citizens who choose not to provide basic information such as a name, an address or a date of birth. People could choose not to use their public services card, passport or driver's licence as forms of identification, as they all contain elements of the public services identity, and still expect to access a service. This will effectively grind certain key services to a halt. Services that are not popular, such as the collection of taxes, local authority rents, accident and emergency charges, jury duty, recouping social protection and agriculture overpayments and the application of penalty points, all rely on the public service identity set. The fundamentals of this legislation could have a cascading effect and unintended consequences for other legislation.

By withdrawing the element of the public service identity, we could find ourselves being forced to provide services and, in some cases, financial supports to people who choose not to provide basic information. The amendments place an obligation on every public body to provide an alternative method of identity verification which does not include the public services card or the public service identity. On account of the broad definition of the public services identity, as provided by the Attorney General, there will be no way to provide services to people who refuse to provide the information. This will create significant confusion across a range of public services, including social protection, housing, health and all other services that rely on the public services identity data to provide services. The provisions in the Bill place an impossible obligation on public bodies to find alternative ways of establishing identity. I note that the amendments have been tabled to delete these provisions and I ask that the Seanad support them.