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Joan Burton Leah Farrell/Photocall Ireland
Irish Water
Joan needs new computers for the water grant... €630k more
Giving out money doesn’t come cheap.
6.08am, 12 Jun 2015
17.1k
93
TÁNAISTE JOAN BURTON has confirmed the Department of Social Protection is paying a company €630,000 to deal with the ICT aspect of paying the water conservation grant.
During the week, Burton told the Dáil BearingPoint won the contract “for the extension of payment functionality and development of a customer self-service web service” in relation to the grant.
The value of the contract is €637,230.81 exclusive of all taxes and VAT.
“The administration and payment of this grant is a significant project for the Department and requires the development and implementation of ICT systems, ICT infrastructure and various customer support and communications services.
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“The procurement of services is essential to support the Department in providing a high quality service to the public in a cost effective and efficient manner and is governed by a comprehensive regulatory, legal and procedural framework,” Burton told Fianna Fáil’s Seán Fleming in response to a parliamentary question.
The Social Protection Minister added that “every effort is being made to maximise efficiencies and keep costs to the absolute minimum”.
“In this regard, it is intended that the ICT infrastructure put in place for this project will be reused for the provision of online services in the future.”
Burton noted a request for tender for the provision of customer call centre services was advertised in April 2015. The closing date for receipt of tenders was 13 May and the tender evaluation process is currently being finalised.
BearingPoint, which is headquartered in the Netherlands and has been trading in Ireland for over 40 years, has carried out work for a number of departments in the past.
The government is making a water conservation grant of €100 per year available to all primary residences that register with Irish Water by 30 June.
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@RJ.Fallon: we have nothing to call our own its all been given away by our treasous politicians….this republic has been sold right under our feet and stupid paddy doesnt give a f@@k.
@BananaRepublic1922:
Good.
I rather see them sold than the Irish taxpayer being on the hook for them
I worked in the semi state sector for years, my god the people in them would get some fright if there jobs were actually at risk.
We can all sympathise with how they may feel, seeing their country being sold out from under them, but beating the ever loving sh.. it out of a 75 year old man isn’t the way to solve anything. That’s the sort of thing that makes their cause worthless, it makes them worse than those they’re angry about. A big muscled lad picking on the weakest in society, yeah that sends a great message.
With a meeting of eurozone finance ministers set for 21 June, teams of experts from the EU, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have met with the Greek government in recent days to discuss its privatisation drive, an overhaul of the civil service and the deregulation of the state-dominated energy market.
In a statement that gave no detail on the agreement, the EU’s executive said a staff-level accord had been reached.
This is the main piece of the article that deserves attention. The people they carried out the attack were labelled as being far right wing by the office of the countries left-wing leader. A cynical person would question this.
Perhaps the attackers were people that voted for Tsipras and Syriza in 2015 and now are utterly dismayed at how their country is and sold out from under their feet.
In any event I don’t know I wasn’t there.
The sad thing is there is no end in sight, Greece cannot effectively survive in the euro it is the totally wrong currency for them.
@John Fergus: don’t get me wrong it’s tragic what happened. Those responsible for beating a 75-year-old man should be figuratively hung. That being said the official line on this is likely skewed to benefit those giving it.
@John Fergus: Currency? If your economy was a basket case to begin with, does it matter much about the currency? Interestingly, most Greeks want to stay in the Euro, apparently – go figure?
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