Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

The point of the chapter was to draw attention specifically to the shared services and where there were difficulties. In terms of what happened, essentially we extended the chain for giving instructions for what is the appropriate pay. The National Shared Services Office has two wings to it. One is the human resources, HR, and pension administration function and then there is the actual payment function. Some organisations are managed by the National Shared Services Office in terms of a HR and pension administration function, but not all of their payroll is included. The Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection, DEASP, is the big one in that regard, and it has substantial overpayments.

A further complication is that the HR function being done by the National Shared Services Office on behalf of DEASP identified some overpayments.

There is a figure within the €4.5 million relating to the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection, but that is not only for overpayments but the closing off of cases. One of the recommendations in the Chapter was that there needed to be better reconciliation and better presentation of information in the appropriation accounts, identifying how much of the payroll overpayments are related to the national shared services office, how much is being managed directly by the Department and the total figure. For those that are engaged with national shared services the total is €7.5 million, as mentioned in the Chapter. There are other Votes, including An Garda Síochána, the Prison Service, Army Pensions and the Policing Authority, that do not have any engagement with national shared services. The Department of Education and Skills is in a half-way house position in that its employees' HR and payroll is within national shared services but the teachers and school staff payroll is managed directly by the Department.