Olwyn Enright (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)
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Question 667: To ask the Minister for Social and Family Affairs the amount of money paid to consultants in each of the years from 2004 to date in 2009; the name of each consultancy firm; the work carried out by each; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [29917/09]

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 the potential of Information Technology is fully utilised is a significant aspect of this.

Major IT projects require a high level of specialised technical expertise that often is not available within the Department. For this reason, the Department has a specific budget provision for IT External Service provision. IT External Service Provision is defined by the Department of Finance guidelines as where a person or organisation provides the services or the human/physical resources to meet the ICT needs of a Department. These requirements could include software development, network installation and management; infrastructure management, data centre hosting or managed services.

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 or policy making. For example, the Department has used consultancy expertise to support it in undertaking a review of the Social Insurance Fund and the equality review of the Social Welfare Code.

The total amount spent by the Department on consultants (IT external service provision and consultancy services) in each year since 2004 is set out in the table. The names of the individual companies, the purpose of the engagement services and the amounts paid are set out in Table 2.