Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)

I acknowledge the progress set out in the Government's amendment and the Minister's input into making such progress, including by way of providing extra staff and resources to try to address the dramatic turnaround in the demand for welfare payments in the past 12 months. This turnaround was referred to by Deputy Cyprian Brady. I pay particular tribute to the staff in all the local offices who have had to deal with the matter head-on. In many cases, they will be able to manage the problem within their existing resources. They are at the coalface and deal with people who do not want to be in their offices. In the majority of cases, such people arrive at the offices in a shocked and embarrassed state. The staff deal with them and process their claims.

The staff at the Department of Social and Family Affairs lead the way in terms of their service and assistance to clients and Members of this House. I stated privately to the Minister that I appreciate the work of all the staff who man the Oireachtas helplines. If every Department's Oireachtas helpline were as efficient and helpful, the number of questions in this House would be reduced greatly.

I am concerned about staffing arrangement in the Ballina office, as the Minister is aware. I have spoken to her about it and I ask that she look into the delay in appointing the extra staff. The Minister is continuing to hammer her colleague in the Office of Public Works with regard to the need for the new social welfare office in the town, which was never more needed than at present.

The Minister referred in her speech to the variations in response times from office to office nationally. The shortest period mentioned was three weeks and this needs to become the standard. At a time when people must sign on and receive payments, we need to provide some sort of income certainty to address the very real anxieties people face. In the context of the current partnership talks, the Minister should table, on behalf of the Government, a proposal to the unions to commit to achieving a minimum turnaround time for responding to claims. This is because people's incomes and daily lives are being dealt with. People are not statistics and it is not a survey; it is real life in real situations. I ask that the unions become involved in reducing the turnaround time. If this means redeploying staff from other Departments, let it be done, and done quickly.

I, too, pay tribute to community welfare officers. Deputy Ring's comment on ensuring they are local is hugely important. Local officers understand local circumstances and, more particularly, local personalities. They can see one coming a mile away and, in this economy, that is needed as much as anything else. This is why I want to put on record the centralisation of medical card processing to Dublin, in spite of its being the subject of a different debate. Nobody operating a computer understands a person. We need to retain the community welfare officer model at the level of medical card processing.

The Government's commitment to dealing with debt issues was shown in the discussions with the banks, particularly in regard to the handling of the mortgage arrears problem. The Minister referred in her speech to the supplementary allowances available for mortgage interest relief. There is much confusion over this and Members of the Oireachtas need to direct people further towards those allowances.

The work of the Money Advice and Budgeting Service, MABS, is superb. We often end up doing its type of work in our offices. MABS is a success story of this economy and it suggests how something small can grow and respond in a very timely manner using technology to address real queries. We should all commit to promoting the work of MABS in our own newsletters and through our own publicity work. We should give the service a boost.

Over the next week as the Minister is addressing the issue of resources in her Department, she should note that many people were self-employed in recent years, be it in a trade or some other form of employment. They paid tax and PRSI and, in many cases, employed others and paid PRSI on their behalf. Those whom they employed, who may now be unemployed, are entitled to social welfare but their employers are not immediately entitled to it. They are stuck in a catch-22 situation and we need to assist them. The Minister for Social and Family Affairs, with the Minister for Finance, should consider this even if it involves taking resources from another section of the Department of Social and Family Affairs, as it probably will.

Particular attention must be paid to credit card debt. Although we are concerned here with mortgages and personal debt, the issue of credit card debt merits study by MABS or the Department to determine how we can help people to pay it off. Interest rates on credit cards are crippling, yet the temptation to use the cards still exists. This is not the case with other forms of debt. I ask the Minister to consider this.

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