Mr. Neil Ward:

We are in the process of trying to finalise a service improvement plan for the next three years for all of the work that we do. The aim is to produce a coherent and complete response to all the challenges we face and to the range of Government and INIS policies that we are trying to pull together. We have set that out based around five pillars. I will not speak at great length on this. The first pillar concerns reassessing our mission and purpose and having a fundamental examination of what our role is and how we should be set up.

The second is protecting the safety and security of the system. That includes areas such as advance passenger information, an area in which developments are taking place; reviewing the mechanisms we use to verify identity; and improving our co-operation with other State bodies, including the Garda in areas such as Operation Vantage.

The third pillar is to try to ensure the system is as efficient and effective as it can be. Much of that involves focusing on eliminating the backlogs we have, which will obviously improve the customer experience, and integrating ICT developments into how we handle our work.

The fourth pillar is to redesign our services based on customers' needs rather than our needs. We have begun moving towards pre-clearance schemes that inform people of their residence permissions before they arrive in Ireland rather than afterwards. We have online forms and payments coming on stream towards the end of this year and these will be rolled out for all of our schemes by the end of 2019. We have moved towards plain language in all our communications. That started with our annual review and it is now used on all of our application forms. We are also trying to bring that through to our website. In general, we are trying to find new ways of measuring our customers' experiences and improving the processes around that.

The last pillar is targeting our resources at the change management processes. The director general referred to staffing increases. In the past two years, staff numbers across the INIS increased from approximately 650 to approximately 800. The expectation is that the figure will rise to approximately 880 by the end of this year and that will obviously have a significant impact. We are targeting these new staff at some of the areas where we have pressures such as in the international protection office.