Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Department of Social Protection has a number of systems which have been developed over many years to enable it to pay multiple groups of clients and manage data in regard to the various schemes. These systems reliably deliver over 87 million payments yearly between them. Although developed independently, mechanisms exist on its major systems whereby significant changes made to customer or claim details are automatically notified to other systems.

I apologise for all the technical jargon. Basically, the Department is building a single ICT platform, known as the Business Object Model implementation, or BOMi. The work is carried out as part of the Department’s continuous service delivery modernisation, SDM, programme. As this programme progresses, all the Department’s client and claim related systems will be integrated into the one platform, ensuring that all client and claim information is fully and automatically available across all of the Department’s schemes and places of business.

A high-level group, established between the Department and the Revenue Commissioners, co-ordinates issues of mutual concern between the two organisations, including information sharing. Further information sharing initiatives are put in place as new requirements are identified and specified. The Department also works closely with other agencies to mitigate social welfare abuse and to help them in dealing with their own clients; for example, the Department provides validated information to over 50 other agencies in regard to life events and deaths.

A key priority for the Department is to ensure that fraudulent activity within the social welfare system is vigorously prevented and combated. Social welfare fraud undermines confidence in the entire system. We are co-operating, for example, with the Revenue Commissioners, the Irish Prison Service, the third level institutions, the General Register Office, the Commission on Taxi Regulation, the Department of Work & Pensions in the UK and the Probate Office, just to mention some of the offices with which we co-operate and share information.

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