Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

They are amazingly fast at finding everywhere. The issue is hugely complex, which is probably why people use other services. On the Deputy's first point, whatever about a date for everybody, all of the groups, which are mainly being driven by the senior civil servants and public servants in Revenue, have done much work on this in terms of pressing the reforms and their customer service initiatives which are considered to be probably the best in Europe. Many Departments are trying to build on this. For five or six years the Department of Finance has given Departments very good financial assistance in developing on-line services. Access to many of the services has been enhanced through information technology. The benefit of that is it allows 24-hour access to information and services in the Civil Service and public service. That is the way we are going and should continue to go.

The motor tax on-line system did not exist five or six years ago and now a large part of this business is done at weekends and at night time. I referred to the e-services operated by the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. There was a time when Members were constantly raising in the House the delays in grant payments and whether they would be paid by Christmas. All of these issues have long been put on-line. Livestock registration, identification and movement are on-line and are being used extensively by the agriculture sector.

All of these systems have facilitated easier and more efficient compliance as well. For example, for the past five years the business sector has had the benefit of the Revenue on-line service, which is outstanding. It has speeded up and dealt with tax compliance in a way that was not possible previously. In excess of 90% of revenue business is dealt with through the on-line service. All of the major companies deal with Revenue exclusively through the use of information technology. The on-line system has gone from having very low figures to a situation where all of the corporation tax regime is on-line with the exception of a small number of companies. The on-line service has been rolled out recently to PAYE workers. A range of services are available, including the claiming of credits and allowances, the on-line receipt for reviews of one's tax position and the on-line reviewing of one's tax record, with the later ones being rolled out as well.

Regarding opening hours and examining the continuation of the services, there is the General Register Office and the visa office in the Department of Foreign Affairs and also the single payment issues in the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. More and more of the State agencies should be pulled together to deal with these issues. An initiative I have tried to press myself, which I hope will be continued, is to try to cut down the administration in Departments' payroll areas. With modern technology there is no need for every Department or agency of the public service to have its own personnel department and payments records. My Department's entire payroll is done on the payroll system of the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform. Massive savings are possible within a Department through being able to use the services of other Departments. From an administrative point of view, the more we can use bigger systems the more we will cut down on the deployment of staff.

In spite of all the worries and concerns, when one brings in these systems they work out fine and one never hears about them again. It is just a matter of making a decision to do them. We have been doing that and it has worked most effectively in my Department.

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