Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am probably guilty of giving the Deputy the impression that because there were people on whom we already had the information that somehow some computer would magically zap it together. Everybody must have a review. It must go through a human's hands. Even if I know that someone had a baby in 1972 and another in 1989 and I can see that information, I must still physically go through that person's review and sign off on it to say, for instance, "Johnny, you are going from an 80% pension to a 100% pension" and give the backdated payments along with the relevant correspondence. None of this is automated which is why we took on 120 staff. On some of it we would have hoped that we could do most of the interaction between people and the Department online. That would have reduced the time it took because information could have been submitted much more quickly than through the post. That does not suit some people of pensionable age. On that basis we have had forms which have been dispatched and it takes a few weeks for them to be returned. There are 120 people working in the office in Sligo. They work all day, every day. They are doing the reviews as efficiently as they can. Some 24,000 requests for information were dispatched in recent weeks and over half of these await a response. I assume they will come in but if they do not we will have to send the individuals more requests for information. The only people who will be automated are the ones that we know will not be liable to a change. Unfortunately there are some gentlemen who we know did not look after their babies because we can see they were out of the country, for instance. Again, that review must take place and we must say to the individuals that we can see gaps in their history. These individuals can be invited to fill in those gaps but the likelihood is that we already know what the gaps are.

A sum of €55 million is allocated to the budget this year. I cannot give exact details of that. Some ten people went from 85% to 95%.