Mary Upton (Dublin South Central, Labour)
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Question 168: To ask the Minister for Finance the steps he is taking in view of the fact that Ireland is falling behind in terms of e-Government service delivery as monitored by the European Commission; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [23540/08]

Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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As the Deputy will be aware, the Taoiseach recently announced that responsibility for eGovernment would be consolidated in my Department. Additionally, following a review of Reach earlier in the year, the functions relating to the Public Service Broker were transferred to my Department in April. Since then my Department has gone about implementing the recommendations of the Reach review and is in the process of:

integrating the functions of the Reach portal onto existing Government websites;

beginning to use off-the-shelf software for some of the more costly elements of the Broker; and

evaluating possible new approaches to addressing the problem of reliably establishing online identities.

It is hoped that this work can be completed in the coming weeks.

Going forward, scoping out the next eGovernment focus will be one of the key tasks for my Department. In this regard, I hope to bring detailed proposals to Government before the summer recess.