Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

In addition to those 246 staff, the number of facilitators providing support for people who are unemployed has also been increased from 40 to 60. A question was asked about who would advise people about the back to education and back to work schemes. Again, we have seen significant increases in participation in the back to education scheme, which is important. We hope to see more of that. In accordance with Government policy, the majority of those posts were filled by the redeployment of existing civil servants, either within the Department or from other Departments.

Given the number of locations involved in administering jobseeker's payments in the Department, the deployment of staff was complex and, in many cases, involved the lateral transfer of individuals from one location to another. However, that is being done as quickly as possible. We recognise that providing additional staff is only one element in dealing with the increased volume of claims. Therefore, a number of measures have been taken to date to improve claim processing procedures. These include the introduction of a streamlined process for people who had a claim in the previous two years; an improved procedure for claimants moving from jobseeker's benefit to jobseeker's allowance, which we plan to extend to all offices later this month — that should be completed by now; on-line availability of application forms for the jobseeker schemes; and the use of an appointment system for taking claims in some offices, which we intend to roll out to other areas over the coming months. That has worked very well. People are given an appointment and come with all their documentation and a decision is made there and then for them. We are rolling that out to all our offices in the coming months.

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