Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

The following steps have been taken. Three additional officers were assigned to the office since January 2009. Additional staff have been assigned to the administrative area of the office. More emphasis is now being placed on dealing with appeals on a summary basis to increase productivity. A project to improve the business process in the office was undertaken which resulted in a number of improvements being implemented. Significant enhancement has been made to the office's IT and telephone systems and, in addition, as the Deputy referred to, experienced retired appeals officers have been taken on to supplement the current resources, strictly on a short-term basis, and eight of those have been operating on a part-time basis since July. In terms of the result of that work, because they are very experienced it has been dramatic and that is what has allowed us to increase dramatically the number of appeals dealt with this year. The difficulty we face, however, is that as the number of appeals dealt with has increased so has the number of appeals coming into the office.

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