Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Department has put a project team in place to engage in a scoping exercise in respect of the business development structures and so on that will be required to put in place the process that will ensure the efficient delivery of an application and payment system for the grant, including associated consumer communications and support services. That work is ongoing. Assessing the resource requirements for new initiatives is a routine feature of what my Department does in its primary work. The Department makes approximately 85 million payments per year across a wide range of schemes and a large part of its job involves paying people efficiently and on time.

The Deputy will acknowledge that changes have been made. We have discussed them frequently, for example, changes to IT platforms and so on that have impacted on waiting times in the application processes for domiciliary care allowance, family income supplement, etc. Processing times are far faster than they used to be and the time taken to process appeals has been reduced. While we must still improve, the Deputy will acknowledge that the improvements made have been significant.

The water conservation grant will not impact on the wide range of other services and payments provided by the Department for its customers, but we must work out a detailed business plan for its implementation. We will be paying the grant on behalf of the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government. However, given the fact that we already make 85 million payments per year, I am confident that we will be able to give people a good standard of service in this regard.

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