Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael)
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Question 206: To ask the Minister for Social Protection the amount paid for each of the past five years for IT services supplied to his Department, in tabular form; the nature of the service provided if there were tenders sought for each such contract; the successful company or person; the number of staff employed in his Department's IT sections; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [XXXXX/10]

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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The establishment of the information in the format requested by the Deputy would involve significant time and effort and would necessitate the diversion of staff from other work.

The Department of Social Protection has over 200 regional, local and branch offices throughout the country and processes over 1.3 million weekly payments to social welfare customers across all schemes, including jobseekers, one parent family payments, widows and pensioners.

The following table sets out the total ICT-related expenditures over the last 5 years, including the expenditure on the use of external resources, e.g. outsourced and contracted out services and on managed services provision. This table also sets out the number of full-time staff serving in the IT Division in each of these years.

*Provisional

In addition, the table below provides details of IT expenditures during 2009 on the use of external resources such as outsourced and contracted out services, as well as on managed services provision, where the value of those services exceeded €10,000.

All procurements undertaken by the Department, including those outlined in the following table, comply with the terms of EU and national legislation and with the procedures set down by the Department of Finance. For instance, all procurements in excess of €125,000 are advertised in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU). In accordance with Department of Finance rules, all IT related procurements valued in excess of €10,000 are advertised on the eTenders website. For smaller procurements, the practice is to obtain at least 3 quotations. The award of contracts without competitive tendering is only permitted in very exceptional circumstances (as defined in EU Directive 18/2004) and any such procurements that are in excess of €25,000 must be reviewed in advance by the Department's Internal Audit Unit and annual returns must be provided to the Comptroller and Auditor General. The Department also participates in a range of joint initiatives of the National Procurement Service (OPW), including frameworks established for the purchase of IT equipment, such as PCs, printers etc. and central arrangements for the provision of human resource management and payroll management.

ICT Expenditure during 2009 on the Use of External Resources

*Provisional