Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 14 July 2021
449. Deputy Thomas Pringle asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if there are guidelines, written procedures or protocols or key performance indicators for acknowledgement of correspondence received and response to correspondence received, respectively by category of correspondence (details supplied) in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [38236/21]
View answerThe Customer Charter 2015 - 2020 sets out the Department's commitments to Customer service including written and email correspondence. The Charter states that letters will be acknowledged within three working days of receipt, while emails will be acknowledged within one working day. Substantive replies to both letters and emails should issue within 20 working days and, if this is not possible, an interim response must issue within 10 working days with the contact details of the person dealing with the correspondence.
There is no separate commitment for any of the different categories specified. However, a dedicated Liaison Office is in place to deal with queries from members of the Oireachtas.
The Customer Charter and the Farmers Charter had been set up to run in conjunction with the term of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) 2015 - 2020. However, the new CAP has only recently been agreed between the institutions and Member States of the EU and so a review of both Charters will be undertaken when details of the CAP have been finalised.
