The "millennium bug" has cost the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs more than £9 million, its secretary-general, Mr Eddie Sullivan, has said.
It has taken 100 man-years to rewrite software programs which control payments to hundreds of thousands of people and test them to ensure they will function properly from January 1st.
The Department has been working on the "bug" problem since 1996. The aim was to ensure that the processing of claims and making of payments would not be disrupted.
The effects of any disruption would be immediate and serious for people depending on social welfare payments in the lean New Year period.
The work involved not only making changes in the programs for the Department's software but also checking all its hardware and equipment all over the State. It also had to check that links to other organisations, such as its printers and An Post, would function properly.
Department staff would carry out further checks over the new year to identify and tackle any possible problems which might arise.
Although the Department is confident that its systems will work smoothly officials have developed contingency plans for such eventualities as being unable to get into buildings or lifts not working.
Dealing with any problem has been a major drain on the Department's resources. Some 200 people in the information technology sections of the Department were involved in the work.
"In the past two years everything has been frozen because of the year 2000," said Mr Sullivan. "We could do no other development except mandatory changes [e.g. budget increases] over that period.
"The next thing is the euro. The euro could be as big as the year 2000. Some say it could be bigger."
In parallel with the preparations for making all payments in the euro, the Department is working on an initiative called Reach to share basic information across the public service.
This could involve, for instance, making information on a person's income or number and type of dependants accessible to Government Departments, health boards and other agencies to which the person might apply for a payment or other service.
The purpose of the Reach initiative, said Mr Sullivan, is to cut out a situation in which a person who has separated from his or her spouse may have to call to three different offices and undergo separate means tests for a social welfare payment, medical card and rent allowance in the same week.
At the heart of the system will be the personal public services card and number (probably the current RSI number) which everybody over 16 will have and which will be used by all public agencies "subject to the requirements of the data protection legislation and the privacy issue".
One of the key questions to be resolved is how to ensure that a given public agency will have access to what it needs to know without also giving it access to all other information.
Mr Sullivan said the question of how long information would be valid for also needed to be addressed. If a means test by one agency, such as a health board or department, has established that a person has means of, say, £2,000 the person should not be asked to do separate means tests by the other departments to which he or she is making applications for assistance or grants.
Under the Reach initiative the result of the first means test will be available to the other bodies as well. What had to be worked out, Mr Sullivan said, was "for how long do you accept that figure" before checking the means again.
It might also be possible for people to check the progress of applications they had made for payments or services by entering their details on a computerised system in a public office.
Weblink: http://www.dscfa.ie (Dept. of Social, Community and Family Affairs)