Martin Cullen (Waterford, Fianna Fail)

The child benefit office is responsible for the administration of the child benefit scheme and the early child care supplement scheme which my Department administers for the Office of the Minister for Children. There are over 570,000 customers, and 1.1 million children are currently receiving payments totalling over €2.6 billion in 2007.

The child benefit office operates a phone service using a lo-call number which allows customers to contact the office from anywhere in the country for the cost of a local call. The phone service in the child benefit office is staffed from 9.15 a.m. to 5.15 p.m. A total of six staff is dedicated to phone answering duties. With the increase in the child benefit customer base in recent years and the introduction of the early child care supplement last year, there has been an increase of 75% in the number of phone calls received in the office since 2005. The number of calls received in 2005 was 187,000, which increased to 281,000 in 2006 and is estimated to reach 330,000 this year.

To date this year, over 221,000 calls have been answered in the child benefit section, representing around 75% of all calls to the section. At non-peak times, that is, weeks in which there is no payday, the percentage of calls answered is regularly in excess of 90%. On certain days, particularly before and after the paydays for both child benefit and early child care supplement, the level of phone calls received increases significantly and this can lead to delays in calls being answered. Up to four additional staff are allocated to phone-answering duties during these peak periods to minimise the waiting times experienced.

On the day the Deputy reports difficulty in contacting the office, a total of 1,950 calls were received, almost double the normal daily volume. This surge in calls was primarily due to the fact that child benefit had been paid the previous day. Technical difficulties were also being experienced at this time and this had a negative impact on the call answering service.

Additional information not given on the floor of the House.

My Department's strategy is to continue to develop our customer channels, namely, phone, call-in, and online services, in order to provide a quality customer service whereby customers can choose the channel that best suits them for particular inquiries. To this end the telephony infrastructure has been upgraded over the past year to support this programme of developments and a new phone management system will be installed in my Department's Letterkenny office in 2008. My Department is also currently engaged in a tendering process to procure a text messaging facility which will be deployed in 2008. This will facilitate the acknowledgement of claims, in order to reduce the need for customers to contact us by phone, as well as providing an additional channel for forms requests. The position regarding the levels of phone calls and the ability to respond is being constantly monitored to ensure disruption to the service is kept to a minimum.

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