High-ranking civil servant 'made zero effort to answer committee's questions on Public Services Card' - PAC chair

The chairman of the Public Accounts Committee has criticised one of the country’s most senior civil servants for making “zero effort to answer the questions” posed by the committee regarding the Public Services Card.

Robert Watt, secretary general of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, recently wrote to the PAC to defend the “value” of the PSC, which he said is frequently “misunderstood”.

That letter was written in response to a request from the committee for details of all the public sector bodies currently using the PSC who may be impacted by the highly adversarial report of the Data Protection Commissioner into the card, published last month.

That information was not forthcoming from Public Expenditure, a fact described as “just not acceptable” by Social Democrats co-leader, Catherine Murphy, at committee.

“His letter came back and made no reference whatever to the letter he wrote, and just explained how wonderful the PSC is,” Sean Fleming, the chair of the committee, said.

“He made zero effort to answer the questions regarding the PSC,” Mr Fleming said.

“We’ve asked a simple question, how many organisations are using (the PSC), and we haven’t gotten an answer,” Mr Fleming said.

He said the committee will write to Mr Watt once more asking for the specific details it had sought and ask that he “consult with whoever is appropriate to get that information”.

The PAC was in session to hear from representatives of the National Transport Authority, another body which has become embroiled in the controversy surrounding the PSC after a complaint was made to the Commissioner asserting that Social Protection is engaged in mass surveillance via the information it receives from the authority concerning the usage of free travel pass variant of the PSC, of which there are roughly 1.2 million in issuance.

Tim Gaston, the NTA’s director of public transport services, told the committee that “the only information we receive (from Social Protection) is an electronically read card number” which individually identifies each card. However the free travel PSC is anonymised on the NTA’s side, Mr Gaston said.

He said that Social Protection informs the NTA once every week of free travel PSCs which are no longer valid, in order to prevent fraudulent travel.

Mr Gaston said that the information the NTA sends to Social Protection is limited to the hidden card number, the transport operator, the time, and the date of journey. However, this differs slightly to the list provided to the person complaining to the Data Protection Commissioner previously by the NTA, which told him it also provides the route number and the fare to the Department.

On Wednesday, the NTA told the complainant, Dubliner Martin McDonagh, that he must ask Social Protection why it requires such information, as “they are the organisers of the free travel scheme”.

Previously, privacy solicitor Simon McGarr told the Irish Examiner that the transfer of such information between bodies is in breach of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, as it is neither necessary nor proportionate since the free travel scheme was previously run adequately without the need for such data transfers.

Anne Graham, chief executive of the NTA, meanwhile told the hearing that the authority had not sought specific legal advice with regard to either its leap card or the free travel PSC, but had sought “general” advice ahead of the introduction of GDPR in May 2018.