TJ McIntyre

Again, I think the problem is more the underlying structure here.

And to step back a bit, Malcolm is right in saying identification is a wider issue.

And identification as regards to state and online services in Ireland has been split historically between three different departments.

So now you have social protection on the one side with the actual PSC card.

You have a deeper public expenditure and reform, which is driving the use of the PSC across the public sector.

And then you have the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport, which is responsible for electronic ID verification on the internet.

Unfortunately, they're all trying to build what looks like disparate systems on top of an existing system, which has already been found to be illegal by the DPC in several regards.

And I think it's time for a little bit more joined up thinking and going back and asking ourselves if we do want to go down this road of a national ID card, you know, how should we structure that properly so that it complies with the law to begin with?

The state storing the data, and as you say, and also who has access to the data and under what conditions,

So at the moment when we don't have a legal basis properly controlling what entities in state can access or process the data, when the DPC has found that we don't have that, I think it's a bit irresponsible to roll this out so that now these cards can be accessed by private sector institutions as well.