Ms Ita Mangan:

I am sorry Chairman, I did not answer Deputy Joan Collins’s question on implementation costs. The first thing I should say is that the proposal is implementable. It will involve some costs to the Department of Social Protection because it will require some further development of IT systems. Ms Leonard might wish to contribute further on the issue. However, the Department is happy that it can be done without incurring major costs. The proposal is that from the point of view of assessing whether people would qualify for the second-tier payment there would be an online application system similar to the ROS system for taxation, which would be self-assessed to a degree, obviously with controls. It would take approximately 18 months to implement the system if a decision were made to go ahead with it. Ms Leonard is more of an expert on the matter.