Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)
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559. To ask the Minister for Social Protection if citizens' applications for welfare and pensions and their associated files are sent via e-mail or post, the processing times for all forms of applications to her Department; and the associated postage costs. [14054/14]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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The Department administers over 70 schemes and services through a network of local and central offices throughout the country. In some instances customers call into their local office to submit a claim, while in others claims are made by post or online. For example, applications for State Contributory Pension are proactively initiated by the Department where there is a known entitlement, with the customer given a unique key to enable them to go online to complete their application. In the case of jobseekers assistance and jobseekers benefit these claims are made in person at the customer’s local office with no transfer of files required except in the case of an appeal. In addition, it should be noted that the Departments systems are set up to make information accessible throughout the Departments network, thereby greatly reducing the need to transfer files or applications.

It is not departmental policy under data protection to send customer files by e-mail. Postal costs are not broken down in such a way that could provide an estimate of the amount spent solely on this function. The following table sets out the processing times on the main schemes operated by the Department during February 2014.