Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I wish to make a suggestion to the witness based on listening to people and experience. Given the number of people the office is dealing with, we are bound to get information from them. When one centralises a system such as this, particularly with regard to HR, it is a system and process where one must follow rules and logic. I am a former IT manager so I understand the process by which it all must work. I had to centralise systems in my time. When one is dealing with HR issues and financial payments, particularly HR issues, there seems to be an almost impersonal element to it that needs to be flagged or dealt with in some way from one occasion to the next. I suggest that some pathway is created whereby individuals who have a personal or a once or twice in a work career issue, instead of just being identified as a case number, have a way in which the issue can be pushed up the line and processed relatively quickly through the HR functions and the organisations. I have heard that cases involving an exceptional issue are not being dealt with quickly enough. The witness might accept my suggestion. Trust me, I am hearing that from the people to whom I have been talking.

I have a final couple of questions. One of them is somewhat out of left field. Obviously, there are capital outlays relating to where the office is going in respect of the financial management of bodies. Financial management is going to be the third leg of the organisation. Personally, I believe the office should consolidate what it is doing first.

Moving into that space is probably the right thing to do. I have rolled out massive large-scale projects in a previous life. The NSSO needs to bed down and then move on again.

As regards underspend, it would be preferable for an organisation such as the NSSO not to have an underspend, given the scale of its operations, because it will be fighting for money for the financial management leg of its work. Why was there a significant underspend?