Written answers

Tuesday, 8 April 2014

Department of Social Protection

Public Services Card

Photo of Brendan GriffinBrendan Griffin (Kerry South, Fine Gael)
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298. To ask the Minister for Social Protection if fadas are facilitated on public services cards (details supplied) if not, the reason why; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [16371/14]

Photo of Joan BurtonJoan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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The Department of Social Protection 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.

The PSC is designed to replace other cards within the public sector such as the free travel pass and the social services card of this Department and to make it easy for providers of public services to verify the identity of customers. The data stored on the face of the card includes the name of the person. Fadas can be and are routinely accommodated on PSCs. The name stored on the face of a PSC is a person’s usage name and is determined by the supporting documents produced by the person when registering. In this case the name displayed on the PSC is the name on the supporting documents produced by the person when registered. This is in line with SAFE Registration standards.

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