Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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589. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the number of staff in his Department are working on queries which are received through the new DCC portal; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [35955/25]

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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590. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality if AI is being used to answer queries received through the DCC portal; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [35956/25]

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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591. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the way in which migrants with urgent queries should contact his Department, given queries submitted through the new DCC portal are taking 3-6 weeks for replies; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [35957/25]

Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 589, 590 and 591 together.

In keeping with the Government commitment to significantly enhance the delivery of public services digitally, phase one of my Department's Immigration Customer Service Portal went live in October 2024. The Customer Service Portal is a self-service portal that enables applicants to check their immigration application status, book first-time registration appointments, and submit queries.

Since the launch of the Customer Service Portal and up to 26 June 2025, I can advise the Deputy that there are now over 137,000 registered customers and there has been over 102,000 resolved queries. Additionally, almost 55,000 registration appointments have been made.

My Department is committed to providing the best possible service to people and a centralised applicant support team is in place comprising of over 20 staff to both answer and coordinate customer queries. When a query is received, it will either be answered directly by this central team or it will be assigned to the relevant division within the Immigration Service. Each division has designated staff to answer customer queries as part of their overall duties.

There is a chatbot on the portal that is powered by AI and provides 24/7 customer support. There is also an internal AI ‘co-pilot’ programme. This programme provides a summary of a customer's interactions with the Immigration Service to-date, and assists officials to respond to queries. It should be noted that all queries submitted through the portal are responded to directly by departmental staff.

If a person has submitted an urgent query through the Customer Service Portal and wish to follow up, they should continue to use the portal as this is the primary avenue to communicate with the Immigration Service. Applicants can be assured that all queries will be responded to as quickly as possible.

My Department continues to monitor customer experience and is committed to its continuous improvement. The functionality of all our online platforms are under constant review.