Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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Question 400: To ask the Minister for Social Protection if she will provide, in tabular form, details of public service provision responsibilities of her Department outsourced to the private sector; and the cost of each service outsourced over the past 12 months. [36706/12]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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The Department of Social Protection makes use of third party provision of services as a means of complementing its own operational capability. The particular areas of activity include disbursing payments to customers by An Post – over 43 million payments per annum; providing employment guidance services to the long-term unemployed; processing jobseeker and lone parent claims in 62 branch offices; providing employment support services to people with disabilities; supplementing State-provided training options with Technical Employment Support Grants and Technical Assistance and Training Supports; and supplementing Departmental staff in meeting ICT requirements, such as software development, network installation and management, infrastructure management, data centre hosting, managed services, etc. The value of these contracts varies in accordance with volume, but the approximate value of these services set out in the following table: