Martin Cullen (Waterford, Fianna Fail)

I would not seek to justify what happened to the Deputy or to anyone else. It is utterly unacceptable and I have made that clear in the Department. We have tried to put extra staff in there to cope with the volumes on certain days. It appears that on the particular day the Deputy called, there were technical problems with the phone system which compounded the problem. I hope that if the Deputy tries again, he will not have a similar experience. I am sure he will test the system again and I would be interested to know how he gets on. The information available to me is that people are getting responses, although the number of calls goes through the roof on the day before and the day after payments.

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