Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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Question 448: To ask the Minister for Health the name of the company with which the Health Service Executive has a contract to provide customer support services to the primary care reimbursement service in Finglas, Dublin 11; the length of time the HSE had a contract with the company; if he will provide in tabular form the number of whole-time equivalent staff the company has supplied to the HSE year on year between 2008 and 2011; his views on his failure and that of the HSE to ensure that adequate staffing levels were in place at the PCRS in time for the centralisation of medical and general practitioner card processing and that due to this failing applicants will now be adversely affected. [19948/11]

Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Labour)
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The Health Service Executive has centralised the processing of all new applications and renewals of medical cards at the Primary Care Reimbursement Service (PCRS) in Finglas, Dublin with effect from 1st July 2011. The Executive has stated that there is no backlog of work in the central office and all complete medical card applications and reviews are being processed within 15 working days or less.

At the moment, PCRS has 245 whole time equivalent staff. About 90 staff have moved to the PCRS to implement the final phase of centralisation and the HSE is seeking redeployment, under the terms of the Public Service Agreement, to increase this number to 150. I have raised this issue directly with the PCRS and I expressed my dissatisfaction that the full complement of HSE staff was not in place on 1st July. I am advised that they hope to have the full complement of staff in place within the next 6-8 weeks.

The PCRS central office has a contract with Matrix Resources, Sandyford, Dublin 18, to provide resource assistance in response to seasonal increases in demand for PCRS services. The contract commenced in 2005 and, in each of the years 2008 to 2011, Matrix has provided up to 20 staff to PCRS. The HSE has confirmed that, in order to ensure that services are not adversely affected during the current transition, contingency arrangements will be in place for a total of 12 weeks, until the complement of 150 whole time equivalent posts are filled in PCRS. For this contingency period, Matrix Resources has provided an additional 40 whole time equivalent staff resources to ensure the continued delivery of service to the public.

Separate to the 12-week contingency arrangements for the centralisation process, another company, Rigney Dolphin, has provided telephone support triage services to PCRS since mid-2010, including medical card customer queries support, and continues to do so.