Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

I will illustrate my next question with an anecdote. I was contacted recently by an employer who had applied to the Department of Social and Family Affairs for optical benefit for one of his employees. The employer was obliged to fill in an A4 page containing a series of questions that took approximately eight minutes to answer. It then was necessary to post the A4 page to the Department where it was sent to the relevant section. It took a number of days before it reached the relevant person who reprocessed the questions on the A4 page and input the data into the system in order that the application for optical benefit would be considered. My point is that all of this information was contained on the P35 form submitted previously by the employer. Six years ago I noted that were the benchmarking awards to be paid at the then cost of €1 billion, the Government should have seen to it that efficiencies were achieved as a consequence. This story is typical of hundreds of thousands of cases in a system that is inefficient, costs money, incurs delays and not in the best interests of either the employee or the customer. With hindsight, does the Taoiseach believe it was a good idea to pay the benchmarking money without securing benchmarks for efficiency in a public service that is so critical to so many aspects of Irish life? Was it a good idea to pay it without requiring any efficiencies for extra benefit for the customer?

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