Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am, again, grateful to the Deputy for these questions. In terms of the legislation and the ICT, the Deputy will be aware that I will be before the committee discussing these issues in more detail before this session ends. In regard to the ICT, we are in a process.

The development of the ICT infrastructure for the affordable child care scheme has gone into what is called a peer review process in the context of the development of complicated systems within the Oireachtas that are helpful to ensure that, ultimately, we get it right, even though it takes time. We have begun a significant part of the process. A number of steps have been gone through already. The business case is currently being reviewed. Work on the business support requirements is under way and the functional requirements specification will be finalised by the end of June. We have done some data sharing requirements with the Revenue Commissioners and the Department of Social Protection. Those have been finalised with the plan for the ICT system, and this links with the development in that respect. For example, the Department of Social Protection has agreed to host the affordable child care scheme, ACS, data. I could go on. There are a number of ways in which the different Departments are working very closely with us, both in terms of ICT and data protection, to ensure we get it right.

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