Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Yes, 2023. I am sorry; I am losing track of the years. In the interim, 30 social welfare inspectors have been temporarily reassigned to assist with claims processing. The national contact phone line for the community welfare service provides information on the CWS and direct access to a community welfare officer, CWO, as necessary. The phone line receives approximately 7,000 calls in a typical month and has an average wait time of two minutes. Work is under way to develop an online digital additional needs payment application. It is anticipated that this will be live in the first quarter of 2023. I know that is something the Deputy has raised with me.

The Deputy asked me about heating. By the end of 2022, 994 people had received the heat supplement. That is the number we were able to help there. She also mentioned dental treatment. The providers are actually very proactive in reminding people that they are due a treatment but we do want to make sure that people get their entitlements. That is something we can look at. We have been doing a lot of work in other areas but it is something we can look at this year. We are all committed to more digitisation and more apps to make life easier. The only problem is finding all of these apps on your phone. We are committed to looking at that.

The Deputy also mentioned young jobseekers. There is a reduced payment for such jobseekers but there are a lot of supports for young people who take up training opportunities. I encourage anybody who is on a jobseeker's payment to look at what is available because there are very generous supports for those who want to take up some training or take up work through the different schemes we have available.

On child maintenance, as the Deputy knows, we are looking at advancing the legislative provisions and associated provisions to ensure the earliest possible implementation of the changes I have announced, that is, the two changes in respect of the means test.

In the meantime, on an administrative basis my Department is not requiring people to make efforts to seek maintenance from their child’s other parent and the liable relative provisions are not being applied to new claims for one-parent family payment. In effect, we are doing everything we can to help and to implement what we have decided but we need to pass legislation on it.