12. Question No. 12—RevenueANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua) to the Minister of RevenueQuestion No. 12—Revenue12. ANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua) to the Minister of Revenue: What measures if any has he taken to ensure Inland Revenue is able to respond promptly to all incoming inquiries specifically those received through Inland Revenue call centres? Hon DAVID PARKER (Attorney-General) on behalf of the Minister of Revenue: I expect the Commissioner of Inland Revenue to ensure that phone calls are answered as efficiently as is practicable correspondence is dealt with as efficiently as practicable and customers calling into the Inland Revenue public counters are dealt with efficiently and fairly. I'm advised that at peak times some phone calls fall into a queue and are not dealt with and I'm also advised that Inland Revenue customers since the latest upgrade are increasingly transacting their business via the Inland Revenue website and personalised myIR pages. Andrew Bayly: Is it acceptable to him that as of yesterday morning the IRD website specified that there was a 75-minute wait time on its call centre and today it says IRD is unable to accept calls at all? Hon DAVID PARKER: I'm not aware of those particular messages on the website. I am aware that the amount of call traffic to Inland Revenue tripled between January and I forget whether it was 7 March or May I'm sorry. As a consequence numbers of calls went from some 200000 to some 700000. That was because the upgrade to the IRD system went live which affected every taxpayer who was an employer or an employee everyone who gets interest income and every Working for Families recipient and as a consequence the system has had difficulty answering all calls notwithstanding the fact that call centre staff were increased by around 300 people to 900 people at peak. Andrew Bayly: What reason has he been given for the 695388 callers who have hung up after phoning the IRD call centre in the last four months to September 2019 as stated in his response to written question No. 36904? Hon DAVID PARKER: The reasons that I have been given were outlined in an earlier answer in that the upgrade to the system which is the largest IT project in the history of the State sector and which came in on time and under budget—nevertheless because some people were surprised by receiving unrequested refunds the number of calls spiked from some 200000 to 700000. The number of calls that weren't answered peaked at the same period and the number of calls that are unanswered has progressively decreased since. Andrew Bayly: How can 695388 callers have their IRD issues addressed if he does not require IRD to deliver an accessible service? Hon DAVID PARKER: People have a number of choices as to how they deal with that situation. Of course we would prefer that every call was answered; sometimes it cannot be. The choices that people have that they most commonly choose are either to call back which many people do or to use the web-based services. As I have said the number of unanswered calls has decreased dramatically. In terms of whether it would have been practicable to properly train more than 900 call centre staff the decision of those with operational responsibility was that 900 was the appropriate number.