Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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812. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills when her Department requested its payroll provider to develop the software necessary to release the increments deferred under the Haddington Road agreement. [1518/15]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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813. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills when her Department requested the delivery of software necessary to release the increments deferred under the Haddington Road agreement from its payroll provider. [1519/15]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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814. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the timeframe commitments provided by her Department’s payroll provider for the delivery of the software necessary to release the increments deferred under the Haddington Road agreement in time for the payment of those increments by the date due. [1520/15]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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815. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the estimate received by her Department of the costs of developing the software necessary to release the increments deferred under the Haddington Road agreement. [1521/15]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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816. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the cost of developing the software necessary to release the increments deferred under the Haddington Road agreement. [1522/15]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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817. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the interim checks made and the intervals by officials in her Department to ensure development of the software necessary to release the increments deferred under the Haddington Road agreement would be completed in time. [1523/15]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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818. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the interim updates received by officials in her Department from its software providers on the progress of the development of the software necessary to release the increments deferred under the Haddington Road agreement. [1524/15]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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819. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills when her Department became aware that software requested from its payroll provider necessary to release the increments which were deferred under the Haddington Road agreement was found to be incapable of releasing the increments. [1525/15]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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820. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills when her Department’s payroll provider originally projected the delivery of the software necessary to release the increments deferred under the Haddington Road agreement. [1526/15]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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821. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills when her Department was made aware by its payroll provider that the development of software necessary to release the increments deferred under the Haddington Road agreement was extremely complex and would take longer to develop than originally projected. [1527/15]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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822. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the difficulties that have been identified by her Department in the development of the software necessary to release the increments which were deferred under the Haddington Road agreement. [1528/15]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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823. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the specifications that were provided to her Department’s software provider for the development of the software necessary to release the increments which were deferred under the Haddington Road agreement. [1529/15]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 812 to 823, inclusive, together.

My Department operates the largest payroll in the State, with approximately 98,000 school employees and pensioners paid every fortnight. These payrolls have become increasingly complex over the past five years, due to the introduction of three salary scales and two sets of allowances, by comparison to a single salary scale and set of allowances for all teachers prior to 2010; the introduction of the Universal Social Charge, the Pension-Related Deduction and the single pension scheme; the Implementation of Section 30 of the Teaching Council Act 2001; and the new sick leave regulations for schools and employees, etc.

In addition, school employee payrolls have a high volume of substitute and casual appointments for payment, which is not a feature of comparable major payrolls for Civil Servants, the Army and the Garda Síochána etc. Work is ongoing to incorporate payments to home tutors through the payroll, which will broaden the range of payees coming within the remit of the school employee payrolls.

Accordingly, the development of the software to implement the Haddington Road Agreement in the context of the overall numbers being paid on the payroll, including substitute and casual appointees), the payroll complexities referenced above and the complexity of the agreement itself has been a very difficult and complex task.

The Department's software provider was engaged on 17 July 2014 to develop software for the deferral of increments for school employees and advised that the software needed to be available for testing by 1 September 2014 and implementation on the live payrolls by 15 September 2014. As this was a complex development, there was a number of subsequent communications with the software provider to clarify various aspects of the specification.

The software was delivered for testing on 16 October 2014. Due to the complexity of the system and the number and range of employees, all software enhancements have to be robustly tested to ensure there is no adverse impact on any aspect of the overall payroll operation. A further complication in this instance was the requirement to test this software in conjunction with other software to calculate or recalculate Haddington Road Agreement allowances taking account of the impact of increments and allowances for those reaching €65,000. The testing of this software to defer increments took longer than originally anticipated and was not completed in time for the payroll issues in December 2014. As the software was initially developed to process employees due a deferred increment in the payroll period being processed, further software was needed to process employees due deferred increments from December 2014. The Department's software provider was engaged on 19 December 2014 to provide this additional software, which was delivered for user acceptance testing on 8 January 2015. This software is currently undergoing robust testing with target dates for the payment of the deferred increments and arrears to primary teachers and special need assistants on 12 February 2015 and to post-primary teachers on 19 February 2015.

The overall cost of the software for the deferral of increments is approximately €64,000, including VAT.