Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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Question 179: To ask the Minister for Social and Family Affairs if he uses video conferencing technology in order to reduce the amount of travel taken to attend meetings; if his Department has video conferencing facilities available to staff in each Departmental building; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [32668/07]

Martin Cullen (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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The Department does not currently use video conferencing facilities other than in a test environment. Effective video conferencing technology requires considerable network bandwidth and bandwidth of this capacity has only become generally economically available in recent times. Video conferencing facilities also require development of the underlying Information and Communications Technology (ICT) infrastructure. The Department has already undertaken significant work in this area and will continue to do so over the coming year. Video conferencing will be introduced by the Department at a future date.