David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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225. To ask the Minister for Social Protection further to Parliamentary Questions Nos. 17 and 30 of 5 March 2014 the progress that has been made with the roll-out of the new public services card to social welfare recipients; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [5020/15]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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The purpose of the 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.

Considerable progress continues to be made in the roll out of the Public Service Card. Approximately 1,190,000 cards have now been produced. These include approximately 343,000 PSC Free Travel variants.

Face-to-Face registration is taking place countrywide in 89 offices of the Department for individual applicants for a Personal Public Service (PPS) Number and people applying for or in receipt of social protection payments or benefits, including Jobseeker payments, Free Travel entitlement, Child Benefit payments, State Pensions, and One Parent Family payments.

Selected low-risk customers have also been invited to avail of postal registration processes which involves either the utilisation, with consent, of information already provided to other Government agencies, (for example, a photograph supplied in connection with an application for a passport), or, in the case of selected pensioners over 66 who collect their payments at a Post Office, the provision of passport-standard photographs.

The PSC project has been earmarked as a key initiative in the Public Service Reform Plan with the aim to “expand the use of the PSC to cover a greater range of services”. PSC registration is being expanded to encompass all Departmental scheme customers and over time, the adult population of Ireland.