Doherty: Appeal of Public Services Card enforcement notice will 'hopfully' be completed by March

Regina Doherty, the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection, said the appeal is necessary as “the cost of not appealing would be absolutely enormous to the State, and not just in terms of finances”.

Speaking at the launch of research into the cost of bereavement in Ireland, Ms Doherty said the enforcement notice, delivered by the Data Protection Commissioner Helen Dixon in the wake of the State’s non-compliance with findings of illegality against certain uses of the PSC, would have an unacceptable impact on public services were it not to be challenged.

“The actual impact it would have on the delivery of public services to all of our citizens, the 3.5 million people are on the PSC who don’t have a problem with it, would be absolutely enormous,” she said.

She said the Government had elected to take its appeal via the Circuit Court where the costs associated with an action are “small beans, and will come out of our existing budget”.

A Circuit Court appeal is generally taken on a matter of law. Such an action could be expected to take several months, but if it were to be referred to a European court on a point of law, the length of the case could stretch to several years, with costs totalling more than a million euro.

“We lodged our papers on December 21, and hopefully we’ll have a court case done and dusted by March,” the minister said.

The State’s appeal challenges the findings of a two-year investigation into the PSC by the Data Protection Commissioner, which delivered its findings last August.

Those findings were that the card is unlawful when applied to State services other than that of welfare, and that the 3.2 million historic records held on citizens who signed up for the card must be destroyed with immediate effect.

The Government’s stance regarding the investigation’s conclusions subsequently hardened, with Ms Doherty and Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Paschal Donohoe declaring their intention to defy the Commissioner in early September. However, enforcement regarding the findings was not forthcoming until December 7.

Much controversy has surrounded the card since plans were first announced in May 2017 to extend its remit to State services such as applications for passports and driving licences.

While the State has long vowed to appeal the DPC’s findings, the card has since been removed as a mandatory requirement for numerous public services, most notably passport applications, with the new National Childcare Scheme the most noteworthy exception to that trend.