Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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803. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if there is any penalty for parents who do not supply PPS numbers of their children to schools as part of the school surveys of pupils on behalf of her Department. [1417/15]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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The Department has developed an individualised electronic database of primary school pupils (POD – the Primary Online Database). The primary purpose of POD will be to monitor the educational progress of primary pupils (in DES aided schools), throughout the primary system and onwards to post primary level and to help them develop their full educational potential. Once up and running other secondary purposes of POD will include becoming the basis for the allocation of teachers and capitation grants. Aggregated POD data will also be used for the production and publication of primary level statistics. A PPS number is an individual's unique identification number for all dealings with the Public Service, including Social Welfare, tax, education and health services. Having the PPSN on the database will help ensure that there are no duplicate records in the system i.e that two schools do not have the same child on their roll. In the future we will be able to track pupils from early childhood education, to primary school and onto post-primary, which will allow us to ensure that every child in the State of compulsory school age is in education. The Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005, Section 262 allows for the collection of the PPSN by schools and the Department of Education and Skills:Section 262 of the Act states (4) A person shall give to a specified body his or her personal public service number and the personal public service numbers of his or her spouse and children, where relevant, as required by the body for the purposes of the person's transaction. (6) (a) Where a specified body has a transaction with a person, the Minister may share the person's public service identity with the specified body to the extent necessary for authentication by the specified body of the person's public service identity. From September 2016 POD will be used for the calculation of capitation payments and teacher allocations therefore all pupils must be on POD in order to be counted for school's capitation payment and teacher allocation purposes.