Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats)
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1932. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the terms of the contract to supply the public services card; the changes to this contract over time; the date for renewal of this contract; her plans in this regard; the company awarded this contract; the dataset provided to produce the cards; the jurisdiction in which they operate; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [38978/17]

Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats)
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1933. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the estimated cost of producing public services cards within her Department; the business case for outsourcing their production; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [38979/17]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 1932 and 1933 together.

My Department (on behalf of the public service) entered into a contract for the production, personalisation and distribution of 3 million Public Services Cards (PSC) by the end of 2017. To date, over 2.8 million cards have been issued. As the initiative is demand-led, it isn’t possible to predict precisely when three million PSCs will be issued. The Department is considering a number of options for continued production of the PSC when the current contract expires at the end of this year.

The contract was awarded to Biometric Card Services (BCS), an Irish registered company based in Co. Wicklow. It was a condition of award of the contract that all data and related services provision and operation be provided on-site in Ireland and subject to the jurisdiction of the Irish Courts. As a consequence, the cards are produced in Ireland. A number of changes have been made to the contract since its award, primarily to deal with the implementation of new and additional security measures, to facilitate the implementation of new Free Travel software specification, and to allow extension of the contract period to the end of 2017.

The data items sent to BCS for card production purposes are: Forename(s), Surname, Mothers Birth Surname, Birth Surname, Sex, Date of birth, Place of Birth Nationality, Title, Suffix, Address, Photo, Signature, Security Questions and Answers, SAFE Registration Level, Card Request Number, Priority, Card Type, PSC Expiry Date, Magstripe Data, Free Travel Expiry Date (if applicable), and Free Travel Ticket Type (if applicable).

Once PSCs are personalised (i.e. the data is put on a card), the data used to personalise them is not retained by BCS but is destroyed as an automatic part of the personalisation process in accordance with advice provided by the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner. Additionally, the systems used in the card production have been subjected to audit by external experts.

The production of the PSC is a technical process that requires specialist and expensive equipment and data security technologies. The Department does not have the relevant expertise to undertake this production and does not have the long-term scale required to warrant the level of capital investment for the equipment and facilities needed. Accordingly, the Department never considered producing the PSC within the Department and does not have estimates for same.