Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 14 December 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Social Protection

Community Welfare Service: Department of Social Protection

Mr. R?n?n Hession:

Regarding the phone system and who people are talking to, there is a protocol for escalation of cases on the phones. The person spoken to initially is one of our customer service people, not a CWO. These workers are at clerical officer level. We track the number of those calls that get escalated. A person can be referred directly on to a CWO from there or the query can be dealt with on the phone. Between two thirds and three quarters of queries that come through that line are dealt with without being escalated to CWOs. In the past, that might have been a query that a CWO had to handle to explain how a scheme worked, for example. Now there is somebody else doing that from an administrative point of view so the CWO is not taken away from claim work. I will ask Mr. Hand to address the points about phone access, emails and the hub structure.

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