Michael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael)

If a person writes to another person, whether it be in the HSE, the county council or the social welfare system, it is common manners to answer. Why will those who work in these organisations not answer the letters and write back a simple reply? That is what annoys and frustrates people. They cannot get a reply from the public service.

In recent times the most common employees in this country have been Mr. and Mrs. Voicemail. They are employed by the HSE, the OPW and the social welfare system. Did the Ministers of State ever hear of them? The trouble with Mr. and Mrs. Voicemail is that they do not call back. I do not know where they went for interview or how they got their jobs, but they do not answer the public.

All I can say is that this report is a very good one if its recommendations are to be followed. Something needs to be done with the public service in this country. When the public service works it is very good but when it does not work it is a disaster. Not all county council officials are bad — some of them are top-class officials who respond to queries and do their jobs. It is the people within the service who do not do their jobs who need to be targeted. Somebody needs to take on this responsibility. People are frustrated with the public service. There is sometimes a wait of three, four, five or six months to get a reply on a social welfare issue. These are people who have paid their dues to the State and all they want is to get their pensions on time, but they get letters back saying their queries cannot be dealt with for five or six months.

Another issue is reminiscent of what happened with the e-voting machines. There has never been as much money spent on social welfare as there was under this and the last two Governments. They spent it on social welfare and the health boards. Yet when we write to any of these organisations we get an answer saying it cannot deal with our query as the IT unit is down. This is despite our having spent millions — billions, in some cases — on these systems. What is wrong? Why can we not put people on the front line in the HSE, the social welfare system or the local authorities who can answer people's queries? These are the taxpayers. Those in the public service who think they do not have to answer questions must remember that if people were not out there paying their taxes they would not have jobs. That is why they have jobs, because the taxpayers put them in those jobs. They expect simple answers.

People come into my clinic having been frustrated for months by the lack of a reply from the council, the HSE or the social welfare authorities, yet in some cases all I have to do is to make a phone call to sort out the matter.

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