Ms Niamh O'Donoghue:

In recent years, the Department has been under significant pressure for a number of reasons, not least as a result of the increase in our customer numbers across our working-age and illness-related schemes, as well as institutional changes which, in 2011, the previous Government- and the one before that in 2010 - put in place. The latter meant that we redeveloped our business model and our entire public office offering. We introduced new Intreo centres and have been involved in a very significant period of organisational change. We have been trying to develop the tagging system for fixed assets and in 2015 we carried out inventories of 42 of the Department's locations, with a further inventorising programme taking place this year. We expect to make significant inroads into this issue in the next year or so.