Nicky McFadden (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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642. To ask the Minister for Social Protection the progress being made in issuing public services cards; the rationale for their issue; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [35173/13]

Paudie Coffey (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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649. To ask the Minister for Social Protection the number of public service cards that have been issued since their introduction on a county basis in tabular form; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [35345/13]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 642 and 649 together.

The Department of Social Protection (DSP) has developed, in conjunction with a number of other Government Departments, a rules based standard for establishing and authenticating an individual’s identity for the purposes of access to public services. This programme of work, which is known as the Standard Authentication Framework Environment or SAFE for short, also provided for the introduction of a Public Services Card (PSC) to enable individuals to gain access to public services more efficiently and with a minimum of duplication of effort, while at the same time preserving their privacy to the maximum extent possible.

It is anticipated that the introduction of the PSC will result in a number of financial and other benefits including:

- Reduction in the rate of fraud and errors caused by incorrectly identified and authenticated individuals.

- Improvement in existing cards (e.g. Social Services Cards and Free Travel), through better security features, considerably reducing the potential for forgery and fraudulent use.

- Improvement in the efficiency of every service delivered by the State through the removal of the duplication caused by multiple agencies each solving the problem of identity and authentication themselves.

A PSC is currently issued following a registration process, which involves the capture/utilisation of an individual’s photograph and signature and the verification of identity data already held by the Department. To date, the Department has deployed two registration methods – a ‘face to face’ process involving personal attendance at a DSP Office and a centrally managed ‘reduced process’ which does not require personal attendance but rather utilises data already held by other State agencies (in the first instance, the Passport Office).

The face to face registration process is now live in over 51 DSP Offices with 112 SAFE Stations in production. Some 565 staff have been trained. Over 270,000 PSC’s have been issued to date. The majority of these cards have been issued to new claimants for Jobseekers Benefit/Allowance and applicants for a new PPS number in Local Offices that have been equipped to carry out SAFE registrations. The table below sets out the number of PSC cardholders in each county as at the 8 July 2013, the latest date for which such a breakdown is available.

No. of PSC cardholders by County 08/07/2013