Mr. R?n?n Hession:

I thank the Deputy. A lot of issues have been raised. I will deal with some of them and may ask my colleague Mr. Noel Hand to address the issue of the reorganisation and the support hubs. I will ask my colleague Mr. Des Henry to respond to the request for data on the unsuccessful applications.

Certainly, we would not characterise it as a removal of community welfare officers from the community. As I said in my opening statement, that is very much a cornerstone of the service. We have a presence throughout the country, whether that is in offices or by appointment. Where necessary, we will also go out to meet the person, and if it does not suit their personal situation for us to do that at home, we can do it at a location that works for them.

Regarding the phone line, I take the Deputy's point about the phone not being the right option for everyone. In terms of the statistics we see, between two thirds and three quarters of the people contacting our phone line get their issue resolved without it being escalated to a community welfare officer. There is a significant volume of queries and contacts that can be dealt with without a community welfare officer being taken away from the important work of deciding and processing claims. That has been an important addition to the supports we provide.

On the Deputy's point about the resources, we are working on it, but by the end of this year, we will have approved close to 100,000 additional needs payments. We did 55,000 last year, so that is almost a doubling in the number of awarded claims. It is a significant volume of increase.

That could not happen unless people had access to CWOs who are delivering in terms of decisions. We have responded but of course we want to do more.

Decision time is a factor of the time it takes us to make a decision and the time the customer needs to gather and return the necessary information. In straightforward cases we can do that quickly but in more complicated cases it can take longer. For example, as I said, a significant portion of our spend is on housing kit-outs. Time is needed for people to get the details of the furniture, appliances, etc., or other information. We need to try to understand their need and their claim and so we are dependent on the customer coming back to us. It is not that people are necessarily waiting 12 weeks for us. That is a composite of the time it takes to work on a claim and the time it takes people to submit what they need to submit.

The Deputy made a point about once-offs. It is true that people can get more than one but if someone has a recurring need, say in the area of heating, a better answer for them might be the heating supplement. We have given some worked examples on our website and one of them includes the heating supplement. We wanted to make sure of this when we were running the information campaigns during the summer. We were thinking that if someone was at home and was wondering whether this was something they needed for their family, they would want to know if they stood a chance of getting it. We felt people might think that because they were working they would not get the additional needs payment, ANP, so we tried to clarify that for them. Second, we tried to give some worked examples so people could understand it. One of the examples we have on our site is of somebody who is on the disability allowance and has an ongoing need for heating. The heating supplement, which is also paid under supplementary welfare allowance, would possibly be a better option for them. We have a number of recurring supplements. At times we have to do a repeat piece if that is necessary. Part of what we need to look at is whether there is a scheme that is more appropriate for someone, as opposed to individual once-off payments. An ongoing recurring payment may be more appropriate for the person. The Deputy asked about claims that were not approved. I might ask Mr. Henry to talk about that and then Mr. Hand might come in on the reorganisation and the hubs, if he does not mind.