Mr. Eoin Brown:

Freagróidh mé as Béarla, le bhur dtoil. In 2012 or 2013, the Department went through a major transformation, and as part of that, a considerable number of staff were moved from the community welfare service into activation to work as case officers. As part of that, in Galway and throughout the country, we had to look at all of our offices and the services that we were providing in each of those areas. At the same time, there was a considerable change in the service that the community welfare officers were providing in that we changed a number of the schemes. The rent allowance started going to the local authorities and the back to school clothing and footwear scheme was automated. There was less demand for on-the-ground services across the Department.

As part of that we undertook a review of all our community welfare services, not just in the Gaeltacht. We located or relocated them into the major centres where we had Intreo offices, or larger social welfare offices. That included the Gaeltacht offices. At the time we gave a commitment that we would continue to travel out and provide a service to people if they needed it in the area, that we would call to them at home, if we could not deal with them over the phone or by letter etc. That is the situation today.

Unfortunately, at the same time, as I said earlier, a number of our HEOs, who were the people who provided that service, retired and were not replaced by people who had a sufficient level of Irish. Even if we had offices in the locations, we would not have staff proficient in Irish to be able to provide a service there.