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Not at all surprised at this. When introduced it was touted as *one* way to prove your identity to sufficient standard, but others were still available to you. Then someone, somewhere, with no legal change, decided it would be the *only* accepted standard
When the PSC first emerged it was merely the State’s own-brand way to prove your ID to a necessary legal minimum - sure, you can present your birth cert and passport to ten different public bodies, but why not just do it once and we’ll give you a card to act as the placeholder?
And that came with upsides. If you’re registering for a new welfare payment now and you already have a PSC, you can apply for the payment online without having to post anything away or do anything else to prove who you are. From a convenience point of view it has benefits. But…
But at some point there was an insidious change where suddenly the PSC became the *only* accepted ID. Where your passport and birth cert were acceptable before, now they were not. The State decided some of its own ID were no longer recognised as good enough to prove who you are.
This meant the weird world where a person has certain legal entitlements from the State (e.g. your statutory right to a welfare payment), and the law merely requires you to prove your identity to an acceptable standard, but the State created an extra hoop for you to jump through.
While some may see that as a mere quibble, it does open up bigger questions. The card is embedded with a photo of its holder, for example - but that detail is so personal to the holder, and so crucial to their very personhood, does the State have a right to own and compile that?
And that’s before the bigger debate (which has never been held in the Dáil) about the merits and demerits of a mandatory public ID system, and which the PSC could well become if it was the State’s only acceptable way to prove who you are. Might you need it to report a crime?
Conveniently in the middle of all of this the State signed a tender with the private company printing the PSC to guarantee a minimum amount of business, or a cash compensation if it fell short. This seemed to coincide with the new policy of seeing the PSC as the only valid ID.
Throw in the complete inability of its organisers to understand what counts as “biometric data” (your facial structure, eye colour, etc) and “mandatory but not compulsory” and it’s all been on rocky ground from the get-go. DPC today is barely surprising, but massive all the same.
All of this thread from @Tupp_Ed explains the shambles very well, but this reply is 💯
One correction; the example above of extra hoops to apply for a legal welfare entitlement isn’t a good one because the DPC has no beef with the PSC from a welfare point of view - but sub in the example of securing a driving licence and the point remains
