Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left)
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645. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport the reason personal public service numbers are required for the issuing of a new licence; and the reason the information is stored for a period of 20 years, with the ability for it to be passed to other Government Departments and third parties. [47929/14]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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The requirement to provide a PPS number as part of the driver licensing process relates to identity security.

The driver licensing service is designed to operate to the Government SAFE (Standard Authentication Framework Environment) 2 standard.  This standard was developed by the Department of Social Protection.  ID is verified in the driver licensing process through a number of measures, including proof of residency, proof of address and proof of PPS number, as well as presentation of documents such as passports.

It is important to verify the identity of driver licence applicants, both for the driving licence itself and because driving licences are so often accepted as proof of identity in other contexts.

The information is retained by the National Driver Licensing Service (NDLS) as part of the data collected to verify identity.  As the NDLS operates with outsourced contractors, these contractors may have access to the data exclusively for driver licensing purposes.  The NDLS is subject to the same data protection as any other State organisation, and the information is not shared with any other parties.  I also understand that the NDLS liaised with the Data Commissioner when developing their policies on data storage.