Public Services Card
Dail Éireann — 2026-04-30
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Dara Calleary (FF), Mayo

I thank the Deputy for her question. In April 2024, the European Parliament and the Council introduced eIDAS regulation 2. The overall aim of this regulation is to create a predictable and legally binding framework for digital identities that will enable citizens, residents and business to securely access public and private services across member states. The regulation requires each member state to develop and provide at least one European digital identity wallet by the end of 2026. The wallet will enable people to store various identity credentials, such as driving licences, EU health insurance cards and age verifiers, securely on their mobile phone or device and produce them, at their own discretion, to evidence entitlement to services and benefits anywhere in the EU.
A key benefit of the wallet is that the personal data will be held and controlled by the citizen. The citizen will decide whether they want to use the wallet, what credentials they hold in the wallet and where and to whom they provide any credential.
The Department of Culture, Communications and Sport has responsibility for implementing the regulation while the Department of Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation has responsibility for the development of the Government digital wallet. The wallet must meet EU technical, security, interoperability and certification requirements.
My Department’s role is to use the existing MyGovID service to verify that the person seeking a wallet and wishing to download identity credentials into the wallet is the person they claim to be. We will also provide the core public service identity data, such as the name and date of birth, but we will not hold or have access to any of the credentials from other public service providers they subsequently download. We will not know what other credentials have been downloaded, nor will we have any access to usage data.
The Office of the Government Chief Information Officer, OGCIO, is currently inviting the public to take part in a consultation and testing phase of a pilot Government digital wallet. Launching a consultation and testing at this stage enables the Government to engage with the public to understand what they would like from the Government digital wallet.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-04-30/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:49+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-30