Mr. Jerry Murphy:

The Deputy also raised a number of issues around the interaction with the Department of Social Protection and Revenue on the procurement processes we are putting in place to develop the ICT system, and how this affects timescales. A board now oversees the process and it has a series of working groups, one of which involves the Department, ourselves, the Department of Social Protection and Revenue. We are getting very high quality support from the Departments and there is a commitment to making information available via transfers.

The Chair and many members have spoken about the importance of ambition. What we are trying to do is enormous. While some of it is visible, it is like an iceberg because the systems development, the processes and the business infrastructure underneath are enormous and very challenging. There is a balance to be struck between getting there and getting it right. Challenges around data protection are very significant.

At the moment a sophisticated system is in place to support early years and some elements of that can be plugged in, particularly in the short term. A significant piece of infrastructure needs to be built. There will be a portal where parents can enter and supply information which we will use to give directly to the Department of Social Protection and Revenue which will return information. There will be a black box behind the scenes which will do a computation without giving people access to taxpayers' records, and this will tell us what level of subsidy can be made available before being transferred back to the parent. There is another system that interacts with the child care provider because they will need payments to be made. We need to make sure that it all works properly and that citizens' data are protected. Until we get to the stage where we see that happening, we cannot guarantee any dates. There is a specific date for the universal payments, which is September, and we are absolutely sure about this because we can control that process. We will have to see the results of the tests before we can make firm commitments on the targeted payments. We are working as hard as possible to have them ready and we are aiming for September.

Deputy Funchion asked about training. Once we know what is happening and have the stuff ready, there will be intensive training with the sector.