Department defends late release of research

THE Department of Social and Family Affairs has defended research that could end up being published up to two years late — at twice the intended budget.

It rejected suggestions that delays made the work out-of-date long before its release.

The Social Portrait series involves a analysis of information available through the Central Statistics Office and is costing more than €1,000 a day to produce.

Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act show the portraits were to guide policy on the National Action Plan on Social Inclusion 2007-2013.

Due to persistent delays, blamed on “increased scope and intensity”, the first in the series was not released until one week after the publication of the plan.

A second Social Portrait was released in May, others are in the pipeline and the last is due to be finished in early 2008 — two years late.

When the department published its first portrait on pensioners the original budget of €91,597 had increased by 50%. The ESRI has already billed the department for 103.25 hours work. It charged a daily rate of €1,317 for a research professor and €658 for a statistical analyst.

The department estimates by the end of 2007 it will have spent €160,000 on the series.

“The more in-depth coverage and the enhanced format of the portraits pushed out the production schedule for publication of the series,” the department said.

Research professor and principal investigator of the Social Portrait series Chris Whelan said delays were due to extra demands and more comprehensive research.

He said the department had “radically” altered the scope of the series during the project but the final product would be far more useful than was originally envisaged.

The ESRI also undertook additional analysis of the information in the remaining portraits.

The department insists that releasing the portraits up to a year after the action plan they were supposed to inform does not make them redundant.

“The draft portraits were available to the department and informed the production of the National Action Plan on inclusion,” it said.

The initial brief given to the ESRI asked for an “accurate picture of those who are most at risk” and this was to be an essential ingredient of the plan.

Labour Party’s social affairs spokesman Willie Penrose said the department had no business withholding reports paid for by the taxpayer.

“This should be made available straight away, we all would like to see what the research has found. It is very hard to see what circumstances could delay the publication for this long.

“It is valuable at a wider level for all of us political parties and others to be able to examine this before developing policy,” he said.

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