John Paul Phelan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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55. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment the current status of Ireland's implementation of the eIDAS regulation; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [52272/22]

Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)
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EU Regulation 910/2014 on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market (eIDAS) sets out to harmonise digital interoperability within the EU by establishing a cross-border framework for trusted digital identities and trust services. While the Regulation has direct effect in Member States, there are a number of implementation requirements - namely the supervision of trust services, which falls to my Department and also electronic identification (eID), which falls to my colleague the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform and the Office of the Government Chief information Officer (OGCIO).

In 2020, I agreed to the designation of the communications regulator ComReg as the relevant supervisory body to oversee trust service providers in Ireland and work is underway to give effect to this in legislation.

The OGCIO advises that the electronic identification (eID) interoperability infrastructure consisting of a national access point (called an eIDAS Node) which allows EU citizens to use their voluntarily notified eIDs to access public services in Ireland has been installed and configured, thereby meeting Ireland’s basic interoperability obligations of the Regulation.

Separately, it can be noted that a revision of the 2014 eIDAS Regulation is currently being considered at EU level through a proposal called the European Digital Identity Framework Regulation.