John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am glad the officials are here to be made aware of the outrage experienced by thousands of our citizens since August who are entitled to this money. I have consistently raised this issue in the Dáil and at committee. I have sent numerous emails and other correspondence to the Minister, all of which are unanswered. If my queries are going unanswered, I can only imagine the experience of the many thousands of people who have been directly impacted on. This has been an unmitigated disaster in so many areas that it is difficult to know where to begin. The Department has not covered itself in glory.

I hear what the officials are saying. They are right to apologise, but I know many people who are directly impacted on and will find it very hard to take that apology. This has forced some of the sickest people in the State into so many precarious situations, including debt and the jeopardising of their tenancies with landlords, as well as in many other areas. It is hard to know where to begin. In August there was an attempt by the Department to lay the blame on some general practitioners. That is where it all starts. There was no consultation with any general practitioner in the roll-out of the new certification process and that is where the problem arose. Have the concerns of general practitioners been addressed? I called on the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection to engage with general practitioners on whom she had turned her back. She had failed to answer correspondence or engage with them. Has she now engaged with them?

The officials say the issues were masked until October. I find that hard to believe. There were people contacting my office from the outset and I can only imagine that they were contacting the offices of all other Members of the Oireachtas. Some were actually being overpaid and wondering if they were going to be chased up, targeted as welfare cheats or named and shamed. They were put in serious situations. As I said, many others were not receiving any payment. Then there was a line from the Department that there were issues and that people should go to their local community welfare officer, CWO, who would ensure that were there was a shortfall, they would receive some money. However, in many cases, community welfare officers were saying that because people were receiving a par payment, they were not entitled to a penny. I have been contacted by many people. One very ill woman had to travel many miles from Blessington all the way to Tallaght, where the local community welfare officer is located, only to be told that she would not receive a penny as she was receiving a par payment. She had to struggle on.

I passed on the information to the Department that community welfare officers were responding in this way because there is that discretion from officer to officer. Was a directive issued at any stage to all community welfare officers to ensure that if somebody presented who was entitled to illness benefit and not receiving a full payment, he or she should receive the full entitlement from the community welfare officer? There are issues in that regard. The other day when I questioned the Minister, she said everyone was receiving a payment. Last Friday she issued a statement in which she said everyone would receive his or her full payment on Friday or over the weekend at the latest. It was only through the intervention of RTÉ and the Joe Duffy show that she was forced to take action. On Monday many callers to the "Liveline" programme were saying it was not true and that they still had not received a payment. Many people were contradicting what the Minister had said the previous Friday. Is everyone who is entitled to a payment now receiving it in full?

On the issue of underpayments, the Minister says they will be sorted out in the coming period. When exactly will the payments be made?

I refer to non-existent communications. I will defend all of the staff in the Department in the illness benefit section because it put them in an absolutely horrible postion. I am sure many of them received abuse from people who were angry and had been put in precarious situations through this unmitigated disaster. The officials say it was only in mid or late October when staff were being trained on the system. That is absolute madness. The system was introduced in August. Was it trialled before it went live? That would have been the logical thing to do. I would appreciate it if the officials answer these questions. It has been an unmitigated disaster and an apology is the very least they could provide.