Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Legislation is required and I know the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Deputy O'Gorman, is progressing that as quickly as he can. My Department will process the payment as quickly as possible. It is important to say that the more than 6,000 officials in the Department of Social Protection are working flat out. They have processed something in the region of 20 million payments since last March. It has been a huge undertaking and we have had to adapt a number of the IT systems. We are currently adapting the system to pay the Christmas bonus so there is a considerable amount of work going on. When the legislation is passed, we will work on it as quickly as we can.

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