Mary Upton (Dublin South Central, Labour)
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Question 205: To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the number of redundancy claims submitted using the online redundancy claims system on his Department's website for each year since its commencement including 2006; the average time taken to process a claim submitted online; the average time taken to process a claim submitted by other methods; if this system is fully integrated with the Government's REACH online public services programme; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [2551/07]

Tony Killeen (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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The Online Redundancy Payments System (RPS) has been fully operational since June 2005. From June 2005 until 31 December 2005, a total of 2,648 online claims were received, this represents 19.14% of the total claims received for the seven-month period (13,837). 10,610 claims were submitted online in 2006, representing 45% of the total of 23,684 claims received.

The average online processing time is six weeks where claims are correctly filled out and hard copies submitted with the necessary signatures and correct figures. The average time for processing hard copy only applications is currently 11 weeks.

The integration of the online Redundancy Payments System with REACH was considered but was found to be unnecessarily expensive, with few benefits and greater costs than would be incurred with a stand-alone system. REACH itself was only in the development stage at that time and it was deemed more cost efficient to proceed with a system developed specially for a redundancy situation, which is usually a once off event for a company.