Written answers

Tuesday, 16 January 2018

Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport

Departmental Communications

Photo of Catherine MurphyCatherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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1477. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport if his Department uses anti-profanity software on its email systems and online contact forms; if so, the level of human oversight that is applied to the monitoring of this software and its effectiveness; his views on whether persons' legitimate right to petition Government may be blocked unintentionally by errors in the use of such software in determining that which qualifies as profanity being communicated in email and-or online contact forms; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [2094/18]

Photo of Shane RossShane Ross (Dublin Rathdown, Independent)
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My Department welcomes input from citizens and taxpayers. We regularly receive correspondence from people within the State and, indeed, as we deal with Transport and Tourism issues we often receive correspondence from outside the State.

We take this interest from the public at large seriously and we have procedures in place, like all Government Departments, to ensure such contact is dealt with appropriately.

While we appreciate input from interested parties, we generally prefer if civil language is used in engagement with us. For example my Department has published a Customer Service Action Plan and it contains a section on engaging with the department where we make clear that we will not tolerate abusive, offensive or threatening behaviour in phonecalls.

We feel our work on behalf of the people in Ireland and our staff as individuals merit a certain level of respect and civility but this is no more or less than any other person in this country deserves. It may be the case that people sometimes feel the need to vent frustration but even in those cases we try to listen to the key points they are making.

To answer your specific question, my Department uses an e-mail and Web Security Gateway for monitoring incoming e-mails but does not filter the  e-mails for profanity, nor does it filter content contained in contact forms submitted through the external Departmental Web Site.

The net effect is that our systems and our people will not block genuine representations from the public and interested parties even if that contains small amounts of profanity and we listen to those who have something relevant to share with us.

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