Pat Carey (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)

I welcome the opportunity to make a contribution on this Bill, which is a valuable incremental contribution to the making information available to citizens about their rights and entitlements. I wish to get one matter off my chest before I start, about which the Minister will know. Deputy Devins talked about the Title. While I have no difficulty with the English version, Citizens Information Bill, I am baffled by the Irish Title, An Bille um Fhaisnéis do Shaoránaigh 2006. To me faisnéis is about forecasting, for example faisnéis na haimsire. Surely the Minister could consider simplifying the Title and inserting eolas instead. We sometimes crucify the Irish language when we try to shoehorn Irish versions to comply with the requirements of a particular dictionary, whose name I shall not mention to which we all resorted in our time in order to do so. While the Minister is bamboozled by that proposal I will mention other matters.

I welcome the great advances in making information available to citizens over the years. I recall people like the late Tomás Rosengrave from Muintir na Tíre, and the organisation itself many years ago pioneering making information available. My first engagement with citizens' information was as quite a young teenager when the local Muintir na Tíre facilitated farmers in completing applications for various grants. In those days the forms were quite obscure. We have developed considerably.

I have a concern and I do not know whether it is a case of me being sentimental or being an old fuddy-duddy. Huge progress was made by volunteers in providing community information. They did so to contribute to their community. I know at times the extent of the information was inadequate. At a time when I was not involved in politics my local Finglas Council for Social Services used to provide three times a week information on a range of services to people in the area. The information was about rents to the council, the cost of cable television or social welfare entitlements in the days when people from Finglas were required to go into Gardiner Street to sign on as Finglas did not have an office.

We need to try to get the balance right between the numbers of people who provide service on a voluntary basis and the increasing rush to employ professionals. Some services can only be provided by professionals, which is why I am not that critical of the Bill. In the area of disability we need adequately trained and very skilled advocates to help people with disabilities to develop their individual care plan requirements. However, the country is the poorer for our increasing reliance on the delivery of services by paid full-time professionals all the time, in well-staffed and well equipped offices. I pay tribute to the quality of the accommodation now available to Comhairle and MABS, and the way people are received in social welfare offices, which is considerably better than it used to be.

However, times have changed. I am well aware that 700,000 queries were processed by citizen information centres in 2000, which is a reflection on people who draft and design forms. The application for refund of nursing home charges is very complicated. When I first saw it, I thought I should refer the person, who brought it to me, to a solicitor. Do forms really need to be so complicated? Medical card forms have become very complicated. I raised this matter at another forum and while I have the floor I will outline my gripe again. I cannot understand why long-term medical card holders need to be assessed annually when it is patently obvious that their circumstances have not changed. If anything, their medical condition has deteriorated. Why is a great deal of money being spent on overtime for HSE officials to trawl through eligibility levels and people's income circumstances when a quick cross-reference would suffice in establishing a person's entitlement? That is something that must be examined.

The fact that 34% of queries received were about social welfare issues, 15% concerned employment queries and 13% concerned health service payments raises questions. The Department of Social and Family Affairs is pioneering in much of what it does in providing information but many people appear to be afraid to approach social welfare officials. They need not be fearful but there is still some reluctance in that regard. I do not know what the Minister and his Department can do to make the offices of his Department more customer friendly. In many cases there is no longer a hatch. Perhaps they could become more like modern walk-in banks, for example, where one can sit down in a reasonably private area and have one's circumstances discussed. That might be tried on a pilot basis, if it is not being done already. Many of the people who come to us, and we are nearly the port of last resort in many cases, have not had a positive experience with somebody linked with the Department of Social and Family Affairs. It may be the case that somebody has not been willing to provide full information to an assessment inspector who has called but it is an area that could usefully be examined.

I referred briefly to the development of the advocacy service, which is important. However, we should make haste slowly. Talking to an advocate in the employment area today I wondered if sometimes they conjure up problems to compile a stronger case to present so that they do not appear to be redundant. They must have very good facilitation and listening skills. They need to empathise with people but that does not mean they should not ask the difficult questions. However, some sensitivity must be borne in mind when delivering a high quality, customer focused, integrated information service.

I urge Comhairle to proceed more slowly than some other organisations in advertising their services. There is little point in providing an e-mail address for people who want to contact that organisation when half the people in the country are not computer literate and much of the other half does not have access to a computer, except through a public library, to get this type of information. There is a great deal to be said for simple, old-fashioned, clearly written and clearly understood information that people can access. That was the case in the past when one could leaf through a handbook and find out one's entitlements, the requirements and so on. We should not always have to depend on the electronic form of processing the information.

Undoubtedly, additional funding for the development and facilitating of the advocacy service will be necessary. I commend the fact that each year the Minister, Deputy Brennan, and his predecessors, were able to give additional funding to Comhairle and to the money advice and budgeting service. The people in MABS do a great job and I have great time for them. I have seen the way they were able to steady people who were lurching towards greater indebtedness. The link with the local organisations including the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, the local credit union, officials from the Minister's Department and officials from local authorities has made a major difference. I do not want to mention any names but there are a number of people in the Finglas and Ballymun MABS offices that I have seen over the years blaze a trail in the area of advocacy and provide clear information.

Much good work is being done by MABS in dealing with the recipients of awards from the Residential Institutions Redress Board. A number of cases spring to mind where, were it not for the intervention of MABS, the money would have been frittered away unwisely. The people in MABS were able to advise those people, most of whom never had a bank account. They might have had a post office account but they were not involved in savings schemes and so on.

See this speech in context