Olivia Mitchell (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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Question 83: To ask the Minister for Social and Family Affairs the budget allocated to information technology systems for 2004, 2005 and 2006; the increase or decrease for each year; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [10956/06]

Séamus Brennan (Dublin South, Fianna Fail)
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My Department is highly dependent on computer systems to deliver its schemes and, in particular, its payment services. Each week, for example, my Department is responsible for some 970,000 payments that, when dependants are included, directly benefit some 1.5 million men, women and children. Each year almost 60 million transactions are processed and issued by my Department. The majority of payments are made through the systems, some of which have been in place for over 20 years.

To preserve business continuity and modernise its services, my Department has developed a strategic programme of continual development for its information and communications technology, ICT, systems. The principal elements of this programme are: the service delivery modernisation, SDM, programme, a multi-annual programme which is being implemented in a number of self-contained phases and which sets out the basis for development of all strategic applications within the Department; the Reach initiative which is primarily concerned with defining, building and operating the public service broker, PSB; the modernisation of the civil registration service, GRO; e-government related projects and a supporting programme for modernising the Department's ICT infrastructure.

The budget allocated to information technology systems in 2004 was €24.744 million, which represented a reduction of 4.5% over the previous year. This decrease was due mainly to the tight overall budgetary situation which prevailed at that time. The budget allocated for 2005 was €29.576 million, an increase of €4.832 million or 19.53% over the 2004 allocation. The increase in the 2005 allocation resulted from carry forward of €4.225 million from the previous year, the provision of an increased capital allocation in 2005 to fund a multi-year ICT modernisation programme and special provision for a project to develop systems, under the service delivery modernisation programme, to cater for retirement and old age contributory pensions.

This strategic programme requires a significant increase in the level of expenditure in 2006. Accordingly, a budget of €46.426 million has been allocated to ICT for the current year, an increase of 56.97% over 2005 including carry forward of €6.366 million from the previous year. The balance of the increase is to cater mainly for the ongoing programme of modernising and upgrading the Department's ICT infrastructure; the implementation of three e-government related projects which the Department is undertaking this year, namely, the standard authentication framework environment or SAFE, the public service identity — PSI — service and the customer object development projects; and the introduction of the early child care supplement scheme which will be undertaken by my Department, on an agency basis, on behalf of the Office of the Minister for Children.

Each project within the programme of continual development generally has two strands — one focused on developing the ICT system components and the other on implementing a parallel programme of organisational change. The aim is to implement modern work practices, supported on a flexible technical architecture, which will allow my Department to respond more rapidly to change and to deliver a high quality, personalised and integrated service to its customers.