Mr. Alan Flynn:

Regarding the point about forms, we did undertake a project in respect of illness benefit. I am sure everyone remembers the MC1 form that would have been in a doctor's office. What is interesting about these forms is that two parties have to fill them in - the customer, who provides details on things like their bank account when they are making the claim, and then the GP who provides the medical assurance. For the project with illness benefit, we split that form in half. The customer is responsible for their part and their part only. The GP fills in the medical part, focusing on the thing that they know about. The GP, for example, does not have to go through all the bits the customer should be looking at and the customer does not have to go through all the bits the GP should be looking at.

The other thing we did with that project was we integrated with the practice management system. Some 99.9% of Irish GP surgeries use electronic practice management systems. By integrating into that software, the GP is working with their customer record for the patient. They have access in that system to all the patient's files they have when they are filling in the illness benefit certificate. It is integrated into the work they do; it is not sort of an add on. It may well be at the end of the day, but it is not a completely separate thing. It is integrated. That approach helped with the efficacy of getting the material in, but also getting quality data from the GPs and providing a way for them to do it holistically in their job.

We will certainly look with our colleagues on the medical side at doing that. The reason we looked at illness benefit first was because of the volume, but obviously things like disability allowance and invalidity have high volume as well.

The point we made in the briefing about the Department's quarterly statistical report, which is providing statistics on ANPs for people, is that we are constrained with the structure of the PSPR report and that is fine as that is the way that report is done. What we are trying to do with the quarterly statistical report is to provide a dynamic, regular thing that can change and we are keen to hear suggestions from the committee and members on other things we might put in there.

In the context of the appeals office, there may be a structural thing there in that the PSPR might be limited to Government Departments. If one was to go beyond Government Departments into bodies under their aegis, one could then get into vast numbers of other agencies. I do not know but I am guessing why one might not go there.