Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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Question 428: To ask the Minister for Social and Family Affairs the private consultancy firms her Department used during the periods 1 January to 14 October 2008 and 15 October 2008 to date in 2009; the projects each worked on; the cost to her Department for each project; and if she will provide the information in tabular readable form. [4820/09]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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The Department has a major programme of business, organisational and technological change underway to enable it to modernise the services which it provides to its customers. Ensuring that we maximise the potential of Information Technology is a significant aspect of this and external consultancy firms are used to assist the Department with this work.

Consultancy is defined in the Department of Finance guidelines as where a person or organisation provides intellectual or knowledge based services (e.g. expert analysis and advice) through delivering reports, studies, assessments, recommendations, proposals, etc. that contribute to decision making or policy making. For example, the Department has used external consultancy expertise to support it in undertaking the review of the Social Insurance Fund and the Equality Review of the Social Welfare Code.

The information requested by the Deputy is set out in the following table and includes all private consultancy firms used by the Department during the periods 1 January to 14 October 2008 and 15 October 2008 to date in 2009.

It should be noted that in the case of the larger projects the actual expenditure may be incurred over a period of one or more years.