Ms Louise Loughlin:

On the IT side of it, with the disputes, that is a system that kind of requires to be built. The code was developed quite substantially back in 2017-18. We have done some analysis of that over the past few months. That analysis is not yet complete. When it is complete, we will be able to ascertain whether we can resurrect the work that was done or whether we need to look at doing something else, or what needs to be done to mobilise that system for disputes. I cannot answer that question per se at the moment. What I can say is that we are in the process of making some other changes on the system we currently use in disputes, which is the original system, on which we are still dependent, in order to improve the customer service aspect of things for customers of the RTB. It is connected in a way with the processing times for disputes because, obviously, if an IT system is not fully optimised, it inevitably takes longer. There are other things in respect of which we can go into more detail on operational changes we are making to disputes to improve the customer experience, to look at the processing times. I think they will have an impact. We have stood that up now, but it will take time to really see improvements. Realistically, to see those processing times come down, I think we will probably be into quarter 1 of next year. We have had a disputes improvement programme stood up since the start of this year. We have had the support of our colleagues in the Department with new resources and new case officers for the RTB in disputes to address their increased number. There has been a significant increase in applications for our dispute resolution service. As Senator Fitzpatrick will know, with any public service that is demand-led, there is always a bit of catch-up because it is always hard to make the case that you think you will be busier, so it is always harder to secure new resources until you actually hit the higher numbers. That has always been my experience in the public service. There is a bit of that. We do have the additional resources now but they came on stream in March and April, and it takes a good while for that to feed through into addressing the processing times. There are a multitude of things going on in disputes to improve the service, some of which are IT-related and others which relate to other aspects of the service.