Mr. Aidan Dillon:

The VEMS is a new IT system that we are introducing into the Civil Defence. It has largely been built at this stage. We went to market a couple of years ago to see what was out there. It is quite an ambitious single system which will track our volunteers, their training and their Garda vetting, as well as recording their activities and their deployments. It will also be used for vehicle and equipment management and for issuing stock and equipment. It is quite an ambitious system and we are trying to do a lot of things with it. Individual volunteers will have access to VEMS through a portal on their smartphone or tablet. Volunteers will get notifications when, for example, their Garda vetting is due to expire or when any of their qualifications need to be updated by way of training or refresher courses. They will also be notified about their duties and can respond as to whether they are available to help out at a community event, for example. It is quite an ambitious system that is more or less finished. We are in final user testing at the moment. Then we will have to do training and some security testing on the system but we hope to go live around the end of May.