Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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The fundamental problem here, from a public finances point of view, is that the Department is spending, if I remember correctly, close to €14 million a year sending out paper copies of payslips, which seems to be completely archaic in the modern era and given that most of the public services have moved beyond that practice. From the information we were given by the Department when its representatives appeared before us previously and the timelines outlined in this letter, it appears that there is some improvement in respect of the software upgrades. I think the officials indicated that they would have the issue resolved by the end of this year. It now seems the upgrades were scheduled and completed in July 2021. That is a positive.

My concern relates to the last sentence of the correspondence, which states that the Department will be engaging with stakeholders on the proposed solution thereafter, and the plan is to phase in the option to use this service for all payees by the third quarter of next year. How will that option work? Is it the case that a substantial number of payees could continue to opt to receive paper copies and mitigate against any savings anticipated as a result of the upgrade? I would like some clarification on what precisely is meant by that and whether it is the Department's view that over a period - we could ask for that period to be defined - all employees will be receiving their payslips electronically, and they will have access to the information that the Comptroller and Auditor General has talked about. I think most people would take it as standard that they have access to previous payslips, etc.