Mr. Doncha O'Sullivan:

I will try to be brief. I am conscious of time. I hear what the Deputy is saying regarding customers. We hear that a lot around the organisation, and I respect that view. We have a strong focus on vindicating the rights of the applicants who come before us. We invest considerable time and effort in training and instilling a sense of mission in our staff that what they are doing has a huge impact on people’s lives and is really important work that is done to a very high standard.

Staying on that theme, we are absolutely satisfied that we can maintain quality in the system notwithstanding the process by which we accelerate some applications. It is not the case that you could describe what we are doing as a shortcut. Some cases are being taken before others. That is why a case which is in the ordinary processing route now takes about ten months while a case in the accelerated processing route takes about three. It is mainly around scheduling and prioritisation of cases. The quality of the work that goes into each decision is not any different. The oversight we do around quality assurance is not any different. In practice, the appeal at second stage is not any different. In fact, a number of people who have come through the accelerated process have been granted first- and second-stage appeals. We have a range of measures in place to try and reinforce that quality of work.

I want to pick up on the issue of robotics because sometimes that term sounds a note of alarm. I hear what the Deputy is saying. The nature of the work in which it is involved largely relates to customer service and things like being able to deal with an electronic query from an applicant who might be asking when their interview will be held. In the latter instance, the system can search our case-management system and identify that it is applicant X, Y or Z and that the interview is likely to be scheduled on a certain date. That information can be obtained in a way that does not necessarily involve a human having to look it up. There is no question whatever of robotics being involved in deciding actual cases. Across the public service, there is a lot of discussion in respect of these issues. There are strong safeguards in the space of data protection impact assessment and there is huge sensitivity with regard to doing anything in the context of algorithms and decisions. I assure the Deputy that we would not stand over anything like that. There are some technologies that can make things a little bit easier, however, particularly when it comes to a system that has traditionally been very weighted down with paper and people having to look things up manually. There is now an ability to look something up electronically, give the information to a person, whether it is the applicant, their legal representative or whatever, and move things along.