Passivity theory and the positive real lemma have been recognised as two of the cornerstones of modern systems and control theory. As digital control is pervasive in virtually all control applications, developing a general theory on the discrete-time positive real lemma appears to be an important issue. While for minimal realisations the relations between passivity, positive-realness and existence of solutions of the positive real lemma equations is very well understood, it seems fair to say that this is not the case in the discrete-time case, especially when the realisation is non-minimal and no conditions are assumed on left- and/or right-invertibility of the transfer function. The purpose of this study is to present a necessary and suffi...