Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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669. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the overall cost to date of the public services card, including production, activation and all other associated costs; the life span of the card; the nature of the contract with the service provider; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [50526/17]

Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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674. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the costs associated with the introduction of the public services card scheme during 2017, including the staff hours involved and the costs of postage to persons notifying them to obtain a card; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [50634/17]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 669 and 674 together.

My Department (on behalf of the public service) entered into a contract for the production, personalisation, distribution and associated helpdesk support of 3 million PSCs by the end of 2017. 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.

To date, some 2.98 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. My 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 following table sets out, as requested, the costs to date, both overall and in 2017, of the Public Services Card project.

Notes:

*Helpdesk costs include all calls including those related to activation, lost or stolen cards or general queries. They are charged on the basis of call-time and are not differentiated as between the nature of the call received.

**Currently the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has sanctioned a total of up to 218 posts for the Project. These posts include both temporary and permanent roles, and the numbers and locations of deployed staff are kept under constant review to ensure the best use of resources. As of end-October 2017 there were 51.96 full-time-equivalent permanent staff (FTE) and 164 Temporary Clerical Officers working on the PSC Project. These figures include four full-time IT staff assigned to the PSC project.

***Other costs include provision of external expertise in relation to related technical issues as well as development and deployment of associated software on internal IT systems.

My Department does not have a figure for the cost of postage of invites to clients for SAFE registration as, for budget purposes, postage costs are not differentiated across different business processes.

Currently, the PSC has a maximum validity period of up to 7 years. At the time the Project was being launched, the durability of similar cards, e.g., bank cards, in use at the time was three to five years. However, card technology was changing and a new, more durable form of card could be utilised. Following discussion and advice from the Project’s technical advisors, my Department settled on 7 years as a preliminary validity period for the bulk of initial cards. Obviously, this initial policy is being kept under review and changes to it will be contingent on practical experience affecting the cards’ durability in the field.

I hope this clarifies the matter for the Deputies.