Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade if he will provide details of each service in his Department that is currently outsourced; the company that provides such services and the total cost for these services; the other services which may be outsourced in the future that are currently being run in his Department; the names of the companies, fees paid and nature of service for all contracts awarded from his Department excluding legal, accounting, PR or building refurbishment related services since March 2011 [55831/12]

Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)
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The services to the public provided by my Department consist of the following:

issuing of passports;

the registration of certain Irish citizens born abroad in the Foreign Births Register;

the provision of consular assistance and protection to Irish citizens abroad;

the issue of documentation for citizens wishing to marry abroad; and

the authentication of certain business documents for use abroad.

For public policy reasons, these services have been delivered directly by my Department and none of them have been outsourced.

The Certificate of Irish Heritage programme is operated on behalf of my Department by Killorglin based, Fexco. Under the terms of the concession agreement, which was awarded following a public tender, Fexco maintain the website, develop the necessary software, process applications, issue certificates and are the initial point of contact for all customer enquiries. The contract was renewed in September, 2012 for a second year.

There has been no substantial Departmental expenditure on developing the Certificate programme. €2,714 has been spent to date mainly on technical issues relating to the websites which the Department owns (registering domains and security validation procedures etc.) as well as travel costs to meetings in Killorglin and some photographs at the launch in New York.

The possibility of providing new services on a similar basis will be kept under review.