Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy McConalogue for raising this issue. It has also been raised by speakers on other days. I appreciate the anxiety it is causing. GLAS is one of the most successful schemes in the compendium of schemes operated by the Department. It has 38,000 beneficiaries. We opened the scheme recently so the figure is now in excess of 50,000. We have a difficulty. There are in the region of 10,000 applications still awaiting payment of the initial 85%. I have met this morning with senior officials in my Department on the IT and administration side. I am satisfied it is not a resource issue. There are a cohort of payments that we are working through as quickly as possible and we hope to make a further tranche of payments this week. I am assured that all the necessary resources required in IT and administrative staff are available. We are working to try to clear this backlog as quickly as possible.

See this speech in context