Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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Question 198: To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform the initial cost of setting up the Civil Service intranet payroll system CorePay; and the annual cost for running the system, excluding personnel costs. [29986/11]

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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There is no single central payroll system in the Civil Service. Rather, the common payroll software, CorePay, is used by a large number of Departments/Offices to pay civil and other public service staff (such as teachers, Gardaí, etc.) and pensioners. These include the largest payrolls in the country.

The master contract for this software was put in place by the Department of Finance, following an open procurement exercise. I understand that the initial development costs for Civil Service specific modifications were €117,580 (including VAT).

Annual running costs for CorePay comprise support and maintenance charges and occasional software development costs for non-statutory changes. As each Department/Office is individually responsible for its own payroll, this Department does not have visibility of the full annual costs for CorePay across the Civil Service.

This Department does not operate the payroll software. Instead it avails of payroll services from the Department of Finance on a shared basis. Accordingly, this Department does not pay annual running costs for its payroll. This Department does pay the annual support and maintenance charges for customisations to the software that it funded which are common across the Civil Service. In 2010, these charges amounted to 35,757 euro (including VAT).

The implementation of a single Payroll system for the Civil Service is being considered in the context of implementing a Payroll Shared Service. The further adoption of Shared Services is set out in the Programme for Government as one of the Public Sector Reform initiatives and is consequently included in the Public Service Reform implementation plan being developed. Within this overall approach to Shared Services proposals for moving to Payroll Shared Services, including moving to a single Payroll system for the Civil Service, are currently being developed and it is planned to bring a decision to Government on this matter shortly.

The amount paid to Core by the Office of Public Works from 2000 to date was 597,351.04 euros inc. VAT. This includes Oracle licensing, payslips on line, reporting modules, system modifications and disaster recovery. We estimate the set up cost in 2001/2 (inc. initial software licences, Microsoft windows, consultancy, hardware etc.) to be in the region of 77,000 euros inc.

Estimated annual running cost is 30,000 Euros inc. VAT.