Vol. 529 No. 1
144 Mr. Haughey asked the Taoiseach the e-mail address to which members of the public should send queries relating to his Department; if his Department routinely replies to e-mails sent by the public; the timescale for such responses; if e-mail inquiries addressed to officials in his Department are also processed within that timescale; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [1047/01]
148 Mr. R. Bruton asked the Taoiseach the arrangements he has in place to respond to e-mail queries to the address posted on the Department's website; the number of e-mail queries received during the last quarter of 2000; the number of these which had not received any response from the Department by 19 January 2001; and if he will make a statement on the adequacy of the system for responding to such e-mail queries. [1951/01]
I propose to take Questions Nos. 144 and 148 together.
The main e-mail address for my Department, which is posted on the front page of its website, is webmaster@taoiseach.irlgov.ie. For communications relating to the strategic management initiative SMI and the public service modernisation programme, there is a special e-mail address, bettergov@taoiseach.irlgov.ie, posted on the bettergov website – www.bettergov.ie.
In general, my Department strives to ensure that all e-mails to the Department are replied to as quickly as possible and in accordance with the quality customer service standards for my Department. As part of these standards, my Department aims to provide a substantive response to 70% of correspondence within 15 working days of receipt. Where it is not possible to issue a full reply within 15 working days, it is my Department's policy to advise the correspondent as to when it will be possible to issue such a response.
In the last quarter of 2000, 5,809 e-mails were received by the webmaster e-mail address. The majority of these, 3,859, were in the form of open letters, campaigns, public comment and advertisement and did not require individual responses. Of the remaining 1,950, a response was generally given on the same day except where the query necessitated additional research.
If the Deputy requires further information in relation to the processing of a specific e-mail inquiry, I will be happy to pursue this matter further.
