James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)
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281. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the reason for the delay in the provision of PPS numbers to applicants; the average timeframe for the application to be completed; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [36084/20]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The SAFE registration process, which my Department uses to authenticate a person's identity when they apply for a Personal Public Service Number (PPSN) is a face-to-face process, carried out in PPSN Centres across the country.

At the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, my Department temporarily postponed the SAFE registration process. This decision was taken to comply with HSE and WHO guidelines in respect of social distancing.

To help ensure that those who required a PPSN could get one, my Department introduced an email and postal service through which applications could be made.

My Department has received, and continues to receive, significant volumes of email and post in relation to PPSN applications from people living in and outside the State. Data on the processing times of these applications are not currently available.

My Department has allocated over 26,000 PPSNs through this temporary service.

It is inevitably the case that a temporary process such as this will not be as efficient as the face-to-face process it has temporarily replaced, neither for applicants nor for the staff dealing with those applications.

It is also the case that some applications can take longer to process than others, due to the different types of evidence that must be submitted; the absence of any such evidence means the customer must be emailed or written to and processing is paused until a response is received.

The Level 5 restrictions currently in place mean that a full resumption of the PPSN allocation service in local offices is not possible at this time.

Nevertheless, it is essential that those who need a PPSN can get one when they need it and additional resources have been reassigned to deal with email and postal PPSN applications. I expect this will result in improved processing times and a reduction in the number of applications in hands.

I trust this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.