Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I do not know on whose behalf I am answering but I will answer it as it has been scripted for me. I thank the Senator for raising this matter. The civil registration service is an important service. There is a legal requirement on every person to notify the service of births, marriages and deaths that occur in the State and to do this in a timely manner. When a birth is registered, it automatically results in the allocation of a PPS number. This number is unique to each person and becomes the basis for identity and all other services delivered by the Department of Social Protection and other public bodies.

Registration data collected and recorded by the service allows for the compilation of vital statistics and the making of population and related projections by the Central Statistics Office. Data is used for economic, social and infrastructural planning, as well as providing a reliable and consistent data source for other Departments, public bodies, and institutions engaged in the provision of services, the management of public health and research. The civil registration service operates under the aegis of the Department of Social Protection. The General Register Office holds records of life events: births, deaths, marriages, civil partnerships, stillbirths and adoptions in Ireland. It also holds several sets of records relating to life events that are historic in nature.

Under the Act, local registration services are provided by the HSE through the civil registration service with offices situated locally delivering registration services directly to the public. I would like to take this opportunity to advise the House about the development of a new online birth registration service put in place by the Department of Social Protection as a consequence of the enactment of the Civil Registration (Electronic Registration) Act 2024 earlier this year. The new online service makes use of technology to provide a more flexible civil registration process and will be of value to parents of newborn children who may find it more convenient to use an online service to register the birth of their child.

This online service builds and expands on the temporary measures introduced during the Covid-19 pandemic, which permitted births and deaths to be registered without a person having to attend at a civil registration office. The new online birth registration service will be available to persons who have an authenticated standard authentication framework environment, SAFE, identity following verification of their identity through the Department of Social Protection’s SAFE registration process and who have a verified MyGovID account.

Once the parent has completed the online birth registration he or she will be provided with a link to the HSE website, certificates.ie, in order to order a paper certificate. The Department of Social Protection estimates that the number of births registered online could be in the order of 26,000 per year. This is a provisional figure based on demographics and the average annual birth rate of approximately 58,000. In time, the online service, following further development work, will be available to register marriages online and to enable the next-of-kin of a deceased person to register a death online. These reforms are also about giving people greater flexibility when it comes to registering major life events and are designed to bring Ireland in line with practices in place in other countries.

The existing process of in-person registration for births and deaths will remain in place for those persons who wish to avail of it and as I mentioned at the outset, the local civil registration service is responsible for providing an in-person registration service to the public at a network of nationwide local offices that is provided and maintained by the HSE. These offices are operated by registrars, who are appointed by the HSE and overseen by a superintendent registrar who is appointed by the HSE to manage each registration area. We are just getting to the crux of it, Chair, with his flexibility. The superintendent registrar has control over the opening hours and staffing levels for each local office in their area. The Department of Social Protection does not have any role in the staffing arrangements of the local registration service as this is a matter for the HSE. However, the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, will bring the matter raised by the Senator about the staffing of these offices in Dungarvan and Waterford to the attention of our ministerial colleague with responsibility for the HSE, Deputy Donnelly.