The State has taken another step towards issuing all citizens with a new national identity number.
The Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs, Mr Ahern, will tomorrow announce that his Department will start issuing people with new Personal Public Service (PPS) numbers this week .
It is expected that by the end of 2002 every citizen will have a PPS number, which will be a common customer identifier and will replace the RSI number currently issued by the Revenue Commissioners.
Mr Ahern confirmed last night that the new PPS number will be issued by all local and branch offices at the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs. Citizens who are drawing State benefits such as social welfare, a medical card, drug payments, etc, can apply for the number immediately.
The registration of citizens for their PPS number will be co-ordinated by the REACH initiative, a cross-departmental unit recently established by Mr Ahern.
The new PPS number will allow for inter-departmental swapping of information in a number of areas such as social welfare, health, education, agriculture and local government.
It should also prove to be a powerful weapon in the fight against fraud and abuse of publicly-funded services.
The new proposal will cut out a lot of the red tape that many people are currently encountering.
For example, at present a person who becomes unemployed or has separated from a spouse may have to call to three different offices and undergo separate means tests for social welfare payments, for a medical card and for rent allowance all in the same week.
Mr Ahern claimed the new system will ease these difficulties as information will be shared and will need to be given only once.
He said the new system will eventually allow people to conduct transactions electronically with the State from a variety of locations.