Mr. R?n?n Hession:

I thank the Senator and the Chair. I will work through some of the answers and I will then ask my colleague Mr. Hand to comment on the questions about hubs and some of the more operational points the Senator raised. I thank the Senator for his kind words about the community welfare service. We agree that it is a very important part of the Department. It involves some of our best people. We are happy to hear that the Senator feels the same and we will pass that on.

We would not characterise this as a centralised service. The hubs are there; we want to make sure that CWOs are available to meet with people to decide on claims and are not being dragged off to do clerical tasks such as scanning and uploading claims or providing the administrative support that is needed. The hubs have allowed the CWOs to get the administrative support they did not have up to now. I hope that is freeing them up further. It is not the case that the hubs are intended to replace the Intreo service. That is not what it is about. Intreo services are fundamental to the service we provide. They are around the country and that is not going to change.

Advertised office hours are available on our website. We are happy to share them with the committee. They are publicly available.

Regarding funeral and burial services, if there is a particular case the Senator wishes to flag we will have a look at it. It would not be normal to receive the same query from three places. I am not saying we get it right all the time, but it may be that there is a particular context there. If the Senator has the details, he can let us know.

The question about housing adaptation grants is a trickier one. The point I would make about the additional needs payment is that we are not supposed to be in a space where other Government Departments are already in play. If there is an issue with the cap on the housing adaptation grant and so on, perhaps it needs to be looked at in the context of that particular grant. Consideration may need to be given to whether it reflects the increase in construction costs and the budgets for that Department. Given that this work is done at local authority level, I assume the budgets are ultimately decided by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. By far the biggest component in this regard is kit-outs of largely local authority properties. To be honest, I am not sure whether we want to get more into the housing space, or whether the community welfare service should have a sweeper role across other public supports.

Regarding staff sick leave and annual leave, we are a Department of 6,500 staff so there is always an assumed attrition regarding absences, whether that is annual leave or other forms of family leave, illness, vacancies and so on. We try to staff for that so I do not have a specific figure but our Department is staffed on the understanding that we will not have 100% attendance all the time. As far as I am aware, I do not think the CWS is an outlier in relation to higher absences but I am open to correction on this.