Seán Kyne (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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125. To ask the Minister for Social Protection the level of interaction that exists between her Department's social welfare services division and the Revenue Commissioners, particularly in terms of sharing of information for the purposes of processing means tested applications of social welfare schemes; if she will report on the upgrading of the IT system within her Department so that all schemes are administered on the same platform; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [41700/14]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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The Department undertakes a number of data matches with other government departments and agencies on a systematic basis, including the Revenue Commissioners. The main data that DSP receives from Revenue relates to PAYE and P35 details, self-employed data which are used to determine eligibility for insurance based payments. In addition, the Department transfers benefit/pension payment data to Revenue to facilitate the correct application of customer tax credits. These data exchanges operate in compliance with tax, social welfare and data protection legislation. A formal memorandum is in place between both organisations which includes provisions for the exchange of data.

The Department also liaises bilaterally with Revenue through a high level group, whose main purpose is to deepen the strategic and operational interaction between the two organisations. A sub group of this high level group is designated to specifically look at information and data exchanges which are of mutual assistance to both organisations.

The Department uses means tested data provided directly by clients. The extent to which Revenue data could be used is limited as there are differing definitions of income and assessment units used by the tax and social protection systems. However, the Department has in recent years developed systems whereby means data gathered for the purpose of assessing one social welfare payment can be used in the assessment process for another, thereby improving the process and reducing duplication of effort for the customer. This development also facilitates the Department to support other organisations in their claim processing, an example being the support provided to the SUSI grant application.

The Department, over the last number of years, has been working on a multi-annual IT project leading to consolidation on a single ICT ‘platform’ (the Business Object Model implementation (BOMi), ensuring that all client and claim information is fully and automatically available across all of the Department’s schemes and places of business.

Presently, four-fifth of the departments claims are supported/processed/paid from the new strategic platform, with the remainder supported from legacy systems which have strong links to the new system.

In conjunction with the redesign of business processes, procedures and organisational structures, this consolidation delivers key business benefits, with each addition building on the object model. These developments reuse core pieces of the architecture to build new services allowing the Department to be more agile in responding to the changes in Government policy and customer needs.