Liz McManus (Wicklow, Labour)
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Question 80: To ask the Minister for Finance the resources for personnel that have been allocated to REACH; the contractual arrangements to private consultants in regard to REACH; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [17140/08]

Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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My Department assumed responsibility for Reach's functions at the beginning of April, and is now integrating these with the Department's work and simplifying the technologies used, as recommended by the Review of Reach. At present, five of the civil servants who worked on the Reach project are temporarily assigned to my Department, to assist two of my Department's staff with this work. With regard to private consultants, at present four are employed to work on the Broker, with a further seven providing a help desk service. All are employed under standard contractual arrangements. The consultancy contract for the development, maintenance and support of the Public Service Broker continues as before. As with all transfers of functions, my Department must of necessity adopt a flexible approach towards staffing so as to ensure value for money.

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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Question 81: To ask the Minister for Finance if delays are being experienced in the stamp duty section of the Revenue Commissioners; the reason for the delay; the steps being taken to clear the delay; the system operated for identifying delays in Revenue transactions that are outside acceptable tolerance; and the areas showing strain in meeting performance targets. [17143/08]

Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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I am informed by the Revenue Commissioners that the stamping of legal documents is mainly carried out in the office of Dublin Stamping District, with service also provided in Cork and Galway. I am advised that in the Dublin Stamping District 65% of all cases received are dealt with on the day and a further 10% are addressed within 5 working days of receipt. The remaining cases — 25% of the total — are received by post. In Dublin Stamping District and Cork Stamping Office there are currently some delays in processing postal cases, particularly for the more complex documents that require to be adjudicated. However, I am assured that the working of postal cases is continually monitored by managers and slippages are quickly identified; where backlogs arise, additional resources are specifically applied to the area concerned — including temporary redeployments of officers.

I am advised that, for Stamp Duty, the monitoring by managers of the initial response to postal submissions currently involves manual counts of items of post. The current process of stamping involves title deeds being physically presented to Revenue for examination, processing and calculation of any duty payable and finally physically stamping each Deed. This is a resource-intensive process for all concerned. Revenue are progressing the development of an e-Stamping system that will, when it comes into operation in 2009, enable the majority of customers to transact their stamp duty business on ROS — the Revenue Online Service. The legal framework for e-Stamping was provided in the Finance Act 2008.