Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

I can provide the Deputy with a statement of the amount of resources, documentation and so forth the Department has provided. For example, approximately 1,700 responding statements have been made in respect of 1,380 complaints. The Department has complied with earlier discovery directions issued by Ms Justice Laffoy when she was chairperson. It had also complied with a further 23 discovery directions by 30 September this year. The total estimated cost incurred by the Department as a respondent was €1.89 million, which consists primarily of staff costs but also includes IT software costs, etc.

By September 2005 the Department was working on four discovery directions of a general nature and ten institution-specific directions. In total, it has provided 150,000 pages of documentation. This information shows that, notwithstanding the difficulties encountered in the past, the Department is providing all information sought in an efficient and much more organised manner.