Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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602. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection to set out the number of private companies that have access to social protection personal files and-or records of citizens in the context of the public services card; if she will provide a list of those companies; the reason each company has access to those records or files; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [49380/17]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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In general, private companies do not have access to social protection data.

Section 263 of the Social Welfare Consolidation Act, 2005 (as amended) sets out the legal basis for the issuance and use of the Public Services Card (PSC). Use of the PSC is restricted to public service bodies specified in law (known as specified bodies) and their agents (i.e., organisations working on their behalf or performing one of their public functions under contract).

Section 262 of the Act provides that Public Service Identity data (i.e. the personal data held on the PSC) can only be used by a specified body or its agent for authenticating the identity of an individual with whom it has a transaction and in performing its public functions insofar as those functions relate to the person concerned.

While it is a matter for each specified body how the legislation is implemented for individual services, each of them and their agents are, in all cases, required to process and store data in accordance with the Data Protection Acts.

In the context of services provided by my own Department:

- the PSC is produced in Ireland by an Irish-registered company called BCS. It was a condition of the award of 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. Once PSCs are personalised (i.e., the data is put on the card), the data used to so 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.

- An Post is the only private organisation that reads the magnetic stripe on the PSC for the purposes of accessing the PPS Number. The PPS number is used by the Post Office to make welfare payments to customers in post offices.

- The Free Travel version of the PSC contains a contactless chip. This contactless chip allows the card to be used across the National Transport Authority’s Integrated Ticketing System commonly known as LEAP. The application is designed to only interact with a ticketing system reader deployed by the National Transport Authority. No personal information on a customer is made available to any transport operator either inside or outside of the jurisdiction when the Public Services Card is used to interact with the ticketing system.

I hope this clarifies the matter for Deputy.