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WRITING IN TheJournal.ietoday, solicitor and Director of Data Compliance Europe Simon McGarr says that the Public Services Card could well become the most expensive administrative error in the history of this State. Here, we look back at the chequered history of the plastic project.
2011: The Public Services Card was introduced as a pilot project for social welfare recipients in Tullamore, Sligo and the Kings Inn area of Dublin.
2012: The process of rolling out the cards to all social welfare recipients across the nation, including those claiming child benefit, began.
The government said the card would increase efficiency in delivering public services and help it to tackle social welfare fraud. It noted that it would take several years to roll out with an estimated cost of €24 million.
2016: It was reported that anyone who was applying for a passport for the first time would also need the card.
October 2016: The Comptroller and Auditor General said the costs of the PSC had risen to €60 million and that there was no clear business case for the card.
August 2017: The card hit the headlines when a pensioner asked the department to prove that the card was mandatory. The woman in her 70s revealed that she hadn’t received her pension in 18 months and was owed around €13,000 because she refused to register for a PSC.
Soon after that, the Irish Times reported that all persons wishing to claim dental and optical benefits, covered by PRSI, would soon need the card. As would anyone applying for Susi student grants and for drivers’ licences.
Also in August 2017, the Minister for Social Protection Regina Doherty caused some confusion when she said that the card was “mandatory but not compulsory”.
She also stated that around 50 public bodies had access to the information on the PSC cards, but the Irish Independent said that as many as 120 public bodies could access the data held on the cards.
September 2017: Solicitor Fred Logue, writing in the Irish Times, said that according to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights the state had to demonstrate that the card was necessary. He wrote:
The bottom line is that the State cannot simply introduce measures such as the public services card, which process the personal data of the entire population, without demonstrating that it is necessary to meet a recognised public interest objective and that it is a necessary and proportionate measure when all the facts are taken into account.
The same month, Hugh O’Connell in the Sunday Business Post reported that citizens aged 15 and 16 had been issued with the card throughout the previous year, as it had been rolled out to all Transition Year students.
October 2017: The Data Protection Commissioner started an investigation into the card, with an aim to examine the project’s transparency and its compliance or otherwise with the existing data protection legislation.
8 February 2018: The controversy heated up when the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) told the Joint Committee on Employment Affairs and Social Protection that the PSC should be discontinued in its current form as it breached European data protection laws.
At the same meeting, solicitor Simon McGarr of Data Compliance Europe warned the committee that the state could be liable to pay compensation to all of the 3 million people who had the card – if the government was found in breach of the EU data protection laws.
The Minister for Social Protection Regina Doherty responded saying that every week a social welfare fraud case was being prosecuted thanks to the existence of the card.
22 February 2018: Tim Duggan, a senior official from the Department of Social Protection defended the card. The point of the card was to help the Department of Social Protection to identify people correctly, said Duggan, and the media commentary regarding the card had been misleading and incorrect, he claimed.
He added that his department was “acutely aware of GDPR” (the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, which came in shortly after in May 2018) and that it had a dedicated team to ensure compliance with those laws.
27 March 2018: The Road Safety Authority announced that the card would not be necessary for applications for a driver’s licence, rowing back on a previous announcement that it would. It seems that a transport official had received advice verbally from the Attorney General, that the requirement that applicants for driving licences produce the card did not have a legal basis.
September 2018: Mark Tighe in the Sunday Times wrote that the state had been given just weeks to show that there was a legal basis for compelling citizens to have a public services card in order to access non-social welfare services.
According to Tighe, the Department of Social Protection had told the Data Protection Commissioner that the legal basis for the cards was the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005.
But the Data Protection Commissioner’s draft report was expected to find that that act didn’t provide a sound legal basis to compel citizens, who were not accessing social welfare, to get the card.
14 January 2019: It emerged that the Data Protection Commissioner’s report on the investigation into the legality of the Public Services Card will not be published in full – even after it is completed.
The Data Protection Commissioner told the Irish Times, “It is not our intention to publish the full report when finalised, however, we will make public a summary of the findings, in the public interest, at an appropriate stage.”
The Irish Council for Civil Liberties had sought the report under the Freedom of Information Act but the Department of Social Protection said that it had redacted sections of the draft report on ‘public interest’ grounds.
The Irish Council for Civil Liberties said that it intends to appeal that decision to the Office of the Information Commissioner.
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Not this time but I did on the previous 18 coronavirus’…
@HearMeNow33: Ahh 15, that was a good one. I remember stealing through the bushes past the cops with a gimp mask for my husband and a bouncy castle for the little one….fun times!!
@Green Lentils: now there is a mental image…
After reading the article I think the poll should have been, did you judge anyone for breaking the lockdown rules?
@Logan Shepherd: ah yes…all those..”while i was in the park today..there were SO many people in the park..its a disgrace” comments
@Trish O’Leary-Dunne: Thems the ones :-)
@Trish O’Leary-Dunne: Reminds me of the audience on Gay Byrne’s The late late show who would complain about Ireland becoming sexually depraved.
@Yolita Ferue: what park are you going to
Drove from kilkenny to cavan to get the ride
@Minamino: definitely wouldn’t be the other way around unless it was free petrol
@Minamino: was it good?!!
@John Jones: lol
@Minamino: That’s nothing compared to what Meehole is doing to become the most hated Merry go Round Taoiseach Ireland ever had
@Minamino: did you get a ride back?
@Caoimhín O’Cheallacháin: thinking of making the trip yourself Caoimhín?
@Lisa Rowe: haha no I’m good Lisa thanks…. Smells too much like effort!!!
What’s a non essential item to you may be essential to me. How do you decide. Who decides?
@Green Lentils: I queued up for nearly an hour to get into The Range and when you got in 80% of the shop was tapped off. Half an aisle would have stickers on the products saying “This is not for sale, as it’s an non essential item” Board games, jigsaws and the like were not for sale which I thought was ridiculous. I could see someone snapping like Michael Douglas in Falling Down Before all this is over
@David Garland: I was in Tesco and they had the make up section closed but you could still buy false nails?!
@Trish O’Leary-Dunne: Tesco had the stationery aisle and the books blocked off last time I was in.
I mean surely books would be an essential item for anybody stuck at home.
@Trish O’Leary-Dunne: Yes, but even the worst DIY enthusiast knows they are no good.
@Green Lentils: chuck norris decides
@Kendra Jackson: I thought the reason for this was to stop people picking up/touching everything..
@David Garland: I hear you , was fuming
@David Garland: in New York if you sell food, then you can sell everything that you normally sell along with it. It’s been convenient but then it’s caused some people to just go to these places for a browse.
I sure did. I took my son for a short drive to calm him down. After 10 weeks of being cooped up at home it was essential. I have done 1 or 2 more since and I was dying for the guards to stop me. I’d roll down the window and the screams out. Or I’d open the door and let my son out and drive off :D Some people might understand what I mean, more might if i say, he’s not a toddler. He’s 20.
@Marie Broomfield: 10 weeks? Fair play to you.. was there a prize? Lol
@Ian Breathnach: yep 10. we self isolated before the lockdown too. Priize? Olanzapine.
I went to a store outside the 5km from my home for an essential item which the store deemed not essential. I then travelled further from my home where I got the essential item no problem.
I won’t be returning to the first store again.
@Vladimir Macro: you do understand that would not be breaking the rules. Why do people confuse the distance for exercise up so much?
@Vladimir Macro: A store that was open wouldn’t sell you something because they deemed it non-essential ? What kind of muppet is running that store ?
@Tommy Roche: Just reading other comments and it seems it was common. Haven’t seen it myself. 2 hardware stores where I live. 1 never closed, other opened about a month ago. No restrictions on what could be bought.
Imagine if we were all back living in the 1950s where Magdalene laundries existed and pregnant, unmarried women were pretty much shunned and ostracised from Irish society and the headline was targeted towards them with the words “Have you broken any chastity vows?”
@Yolita Ferue: The same mind set prevails, that of judging others, you would imagine we had learnt something from our dark past but evidently not, we carry on.
@Honeybee: I know I’ll probably get slammed for writing this but it just goes to show you what judgmental pr**** Irish people can be.
Is there any cat tax refund since Cars are idle during lockdown.
@Divad Nayr: Yes. If you take your car off the road, and notify the motor tax department, you won’t have to pay tax on it. Same as always.
@Derek Walsh: agreed Derek but I can see what he means in if it was already taxed you cant be reimbursed retrospectively. But sure look. It is what it is. Global pandemics dont happen that often. We cant moan about everything ha. Not that the original poster was moaning.
@Divad Nayr: no, hubby works in MTO, you can take your car off the road but think it has to be for 3 months and there’s a form or something, I don’t really be listening, but the answer to your question is no!
@Divad Nayr: I didn’t know cats were taxed?
@Thomas O’ Donnell: vat on pussy
@Divad Nayr: i took mine off the road as tax was up end of April,filled out an online form. The minimum time is for three months, rang and asked before hand to find out if that’s the minimum time and was told yes but you can re tax it at any time you want.
Let’s try another one: how many countries did not have a lockdown and are in the same (or better) shape as Ireland today?
@Stan Papusa: none I would say.
@mr magoo: Incorrect
@Stan Papusa: None. Those showing exceptionally low rates of infection have an exceptionally low rate of testing, like some in the Third World. Or in situations where the country’s government gives wrong or no information on infection / testing numbers.
@Stan Papusa: Or how about countries that did a more severe lock-down to us and fared much better – e.g. New Zealand that closed everything including airports – 21 total deaths – that’s total not per day!
@Anthony Clark: A very strict, but short and early lockdown is not what Ireland is enduring at the moment.
You gotta break the rules yourself to see others break them……
@Coco86: Not necessarily true. You could be exercising alone respecting social distancing within your 5km zone and see a group of people gathering outside of their zone showing no regard to guidelines.
Then there are the Gemma O’Doherty mob who showed no respect to the guidelines.
Large garden centres could have stayed open once strict social distancing kept and gloves supplied. Gardening, even just to grow seeds in window boxes, along with the good weather, was one of the very few pleasures left.
I always assumed that they were advisories not rules
Went 4 km instead of 2km for a cycle .
@Gabriel Holmes: Say 3 our fathers, 3 hail mary’s and a glory be to the father, clean the candle wax that dripped from the penny candles on your way out,…. oh, and I’m still telling your mother Gabriel Homes, a bicycle ….a bicycle…..
Marie, these are really difficult and stressful times we are living in, you have to do what is right for your boy and I would do the same, this lock down is causing a huge and hidden toll on our mental health, keep well and reassure your son, so many families are suffering silently . We have all broken rules, sometimes it is not a choice.
@Honeybee: Thanks for understanding. My husband say’s it’s not breaking the rules because we are doing it as part of our caring for someone role. but that Dr would say that we just “more readily find excuses for our own bad behaviour than we do for others”.
Mortality rate amongst under 50s is less then 1% – this lockdown is a joke
@John Hoare: continue in your research Dr. Hoare and I think you may find that this virus is a pretty scary thing. If you’re still skeptical at this point I would say you simply struggle to understand most things, if you’re just being obstinate however at that point i’d call you selfish and borderline sociopathic. It’s never to late to re – educate ourselves
@Wayne Connor: “scary” the fastest way to dumb down a population is to scare them”
@John Hoare: you can’t be helped. I wish you and your family well
During Covid 12, 15 and 17 I did……got better during 18 and am really sticking to rules during Covid 19.
I met a friend for a socially distant walk..was very down in the dumps and isolating alone, needed a chat with someone that wasn’t over zoom, we were 2m away from each other and it did me the world of good! Dont regret it and dont see how it increased anyones risk..I can be 2 metres away from a stranger in a park but not a friend?
Broke one going to buy bottle of Dettol
@pat seery: Did you feel saucy
I once went to the local small shop twice in one day. The first time was for food and the second was immediately afterwards to buy as many bottles of soft drink as I could carry which I guess is non-essential. You can piss off if you want to tell me that I can’t have the simple pleasure of a glass of Coke when hundreds of people are travelling here to pick strawberries.
I’ve barely left the house other than to buy food until the other day when I started going for very short walks to an area with plenty of room to avoid people. I was enjoying yesterdays walk when some baseball-capped buffoon cycled right up to me and said “sorry” (not as in an apology, as in “I want to ask you something”). I turned and walked in the other direction as fast as I could.
I don’t judge people for breaking the rules. I judge people for being idiots. Once when I was in the shop buying food I saw someone picking up some ice pops. That’s non-essential but I don’t begrudge him a nice Brunch or Loop The Loop. What I judge him for is how he almost ran into the shop and walked right past me down a narrow aisle before I had a chance to move.
If someone wants to drive twenty miles I couldn’t care less as long as they’re careful. Honestly I think the two kilometer rule is ridiculous because it means if you live somewhere with not many nice places to go everyone will end up going to the one park for a walk.
If others coming within 2 metres of me counts then yes.
I live by the Phoenix Park so during the 2km exercise restriction, my cycle around the Phoenix park each day involved a period of time where as the crow flies, I was a little further than 2km, it was probably 3km or so.
Makes no difference since I was never anywhere near anyone for more than a fleeting moment as I cycled past and always well beyond 2m distance.
Not following them and neither is anyone I know. Listen to this expert.
https://youtu.be/Avc6_ftzk3w
@Robert Nugent: that’s a misinformation video from the far right extre Dolores Cahill. She clearly has an agenda, look her up. She’s anti vax, anti abortion etc. ask yourself would you rather listen to Travis Bickle or Tony Fauci
@Robert Nugent: that “opinion” has been debunked repeatedly but you keep posting it. Why is she claiming lifetime immunity for anyone that catches it? There’s no scientific basis for that. There’s also no basis for her theory that social distancing is totally unnecessary. And her theory that Bill Gates is deliberately infecting meat processing plants in the US is just insane. You were complaining about them being tough to stick to the other day so when you say you’re not following them you’re full of sh!t
I had sex with my wife for the first time in months.does that count
@tuco: was she in Cavan by any chance
@tuco: depends how far away the other woman/women you’ve been having sex with are and how far they travel after reading this.
Breaking the rules… take the poll next week after the golf clubs open. Time sheet filled with lots if people breaking the 5km rule.
Two junctions on my 40k cycle route are 5.5k away from my house,.
I went to the local Co-Op to buy Chloras to power-wash my house…and to the local machine rental shop to rent the power washer. Is that essential? Doubt it…considering the house has been unclean for a few years now LOL
have your say