Willie Penrose (Westmeath, Labour)

The impetus for this arose, not with the community welfare officers or their representatives, but at official level. It is nothing more than a diktat. Imagine imposing something, then calling for the referee to decide something and then calling in the players without having any consultation with them. The first time that SIPTU and IMPACT were given an opportunity to respond was before a committee when I invited them in to make their presentation.

The Labour Party is deeply alarmed at this proposal to subsume the community welfare service into the Department of Social and Family Affairs. We strongly believe that this service, catering for the most vulnerable in society and operating at the cutting edge of the link between health and poverty, is best left where it is within the health service. If it is not broke, why does the Minister and his officials set out to break it?

Is this little more than a craftily disguised cutback, an attack on a vulnerable community? Will this plan proceed under the 2007 Social Welfare Bill? Will community welfare officers ultimately be reined in and prevented from providing information, advice and advocacy to vulnerable people in our communities as their link to statutory health and personal social services would be effectively severed?

What is the Minister's game? I realise that the interdepartmental review group's Core Functions of the Health Service report recommended the transfer. There is no difficulty with the objective focusing of the HSE's resources on core health functions. Does the Minister agree that the community welfare service performs a core health function? I put it to the Minister that it is a profound misunderstanding to characterise the community welfare service as being limited to the administration of cash benefits from the social welfare allowance system.

The late Frank Cluskey introduced this in 1977 and the administration of the CWS scheme is obviously an important and integral part of the work of CWOs. Mr. Cluskey said that the CWO system was more than a mere cash response. Is it the position that the service was deliberately placed within the community care structure and under the auspices of the Department of Health and Children with the intention of delivering a local response to individual needs, including providing clients with access to a range of health and personal social services? The importance of the relationship between income maintenance and effective personal and health services, as well as the safety net separate from other social welfare payments, was clearly and specifically identified in the debates in this House that led to the establishment of the service. These factors are as important and as real today as they were when the scheme was introduced.

Even if this is not the Minister's intent, we are concerned that the proposed transfer will inevitably mean an end to the discretionary SWA payments and that this will have a direct and damaging effect on the ability of clients to access health services. I accept the Minister's bona fides, but we must look at what the end result would mean. Does the Minister agree that CWOs are in a position to deal with people out of hours and in all sorts of emergencies? How will this function within the remit of the Minister's Department? Will the discretion be eliminated, abolished or curtailed? If someone requires an ambulance but finds there is none available, they can turn to a CWO to get funds to pay for alternative transport. Who will administer such a scheme in the future? Where are we going with this? Why is it happening? Is this a crusade by someone to curtail CWOs?

The Labour Party supports the view of the unions representing CWOs that there must be a full study of the service and wide consultation about the likely effects of the changes with those who manage, deliver, use and interact with it before any change is proposed or implemented. There has been no consultation with the people who use and benefit from the service and the great work being carried out by the 700 CWOs. Why should something that is working so well be changed? If it is not broken, the Minister should not set out to break it.

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