Jim O'Keeffe (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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Question 226: To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform the problems with the Garda PULSE system; the annual cost of running the system; the fees that have been paid in respect of consultancy services in 2006 and for each month in 2007; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [13135/07]

Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)
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I am advised by the Garda Authorities that Pulse, the primary IT system for An Garda Síochána, is operating very satisfactorily. Significant investment has been made to improve the availability and response times of the system and I am advised that as a result, over the course of the past year, there has been no unplanned downtime of the system.

The total development cost of the PULSE project was €61.3 million and covers the period up to 2001. The Garda authorities advise that the average annual maintenance and upgrade costs for PULSE from 2001 to the end of 2006 amounts to €12.88m This expenditure includes the cost of contract resources and there are no monthly expenditure on consultancy fees in relation to the system.

By way of background, the figure above includes replacement of the Pulse hardware and major upgrades to the Pulse software as part of the Garda Pulse stabilisation programme which was completed last year. In addition, a range of upgrades and modifications have been carried out to the system to support changes arising from new legislation, additional functionality etc. It also includes costs associated with the extension of the pulse system to new locations and to the set-up of the new Garda Information Services Centre in Castlebar and the new Vetting Unit in Thurles. PULSE is now available in 320 locations with 79 new locations added in 2006 alone. The figure also includes various software licence fees which over the period amounted to €14.25m. The full licence costs are included for completeness although the costs relate to user-based licences which are also used for other Garda systems such as the Garda National Immigration Bureau and the Fixed Charge Processing systems.

Garda authorities also inform me that following the completion of PULSE stabilisation and a programme of maintenance and hardware upgrades in 2006, PULSE has now been amalgamated with the Garda National Immigration Bureau Information System, GNIB-IS, and the Fixed Charge processing System, FCPS, to form a new combined IT system referred to as the Garda Information System, GIS. Accordingly, specific figures relating to Pulse for 2007 are not available.