Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The Public Services Card (PSC) is not a national identity card. Rather, it aims to provide a means of identification for an individual in respect of the provision of public services.

Social welfare legislation provides that a person can only use their PSC for the purposes of a transaction with a body which has been specified in Schedule 5 of the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005 (as amended). It also provides that only a specified body may request a person's PSC for the purpose of transacting with that body.

Since its inception in the late 1990s, the Public Services Card (PSC) has always been intended as a physical token of identity to be used in transactions between the citizens and the State, not just between citizens and my Department.

One of my functions as Minister for Social Protection is the authentication of the identity, as set out in the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005.

Once a person has successfully authenticated their identity, they are issued with a PSC which can be used as proof of identity when transacting with certain public bodies (“specified bodies”) listed in that Act.

This fact was recognised by the Data Protection Commission (DPC) in the Agreement of December 2021 which acknowledged that any specified body may use the PSC as a means of verifying the identity of the people they deal with, provided that they also accept other proofs of identity.

The question of whether a specified body seeks production of a PSC as proof of identity is a matter for those bodies.