Arthur Morgan (Louth, Sinn Fein)

I thank Deputy Shortall for sharing time with me, and I commend the Fine Gael Party on bringing forward this motion. I support almost everything in it. It is a very broad motion and it is unfortunate that we do not have more time to debate it in the House, because each one of those items could occupy a good three hours debate in its own right.

The tsunami of unemployment that is occurring across the land is well known to every single Member of this House. Members must deal with a significant number of representations about it. First, somebody must suffer the trauma of being made unemployed, whether it is through a call to the office in the factory or through written notification. I am sure the shock is the same, irrespective of how the news is conveyed. It was bad enough at any time to be told that one is being made unemployed, but to be told in the current economic climate is truly a shock to the individuals and the families concerned. We all know that there is very little prospect of acquiring other employment, so the sentence is very severe.

The second trauma is trying to deal with the consequences of being made unemployed. One of the first consequences is to deal with the system and to get into the welfare office. I have been stopped on the street in Dundalk and Drogheda and asked for directions to the local social welfare office by natives of both towns. They never had any need for the office in the past, so they were never sure where it was. Another consequence of being made unemployed is the difficulty in meeting mortgage repayments and hold onto the family home. What about the car loan? The education of children is a financial challenge to any family. There are many schools that were involved in the book rental scheme, but I have been told by the management of a number of schools in my constituency that they are considering not running the book rental scheme any more due to the significant cutbacks to that scheme. It represented very poor vision on the part of the Government to cut back that scheme.

The next issue is school transport. When the fuel subsidy was cut back, the impact on families was absolutely huge. In some of my own constituents' cases, their transport bill went from €300 to €800 over the academic year. That is an absolutely huge cost, and if there are several children in a household, then we know the impact that can have.

A person who has just been made unemployed has to experience entering a social welfare office. Very often, there is just a single hatch for new claimants, so the person will have to join the queue. I received a phone call last Friday from a constituent who was concerned because her son had been queuing for one hour and 35 minutes at a single hatch to sign on and was number 38 in the queue on a Friday afternoon. She felt this was grossly unfair because she and her children, two of whom are now signing on, had paid their taxes and felt they deserved better treatment than this. It was their first time in the office and they were in a lengthy queue. That is certainly evidence of trauma.

When a person gets to the hatch and gets his or her claim processed, the next step is when to get funding. It can take up to 12 or 16 weeks for this, which seems to be the average at the moment. Some offices are making better progress than that, but because people are not getting quick payment, they must go to the community welfare officer. My experience has been that when the documentation making the claim arrives on the deciding officer's desk, minor matters can sometimes cause a huge delay. For example, people arriving at the hatch may not know that they should have some kind of photographic identification with them. They may not have utility bills, or other evidence required to satisfy the social welfare officers. These problems lead to more queuing and force people to come back another day and go around the circle again. My concern is that some deciding officers are really looking for any excuse to refuse the application. When that happens, as it does all too often, then the person is into the appeals system. Any poor crathur going into the appeals system is in serious trouble, because he or she will wait for months on end to get a decision.

I join with colleagues who sympathised with staff in the social welfare offices. I know a few of them personally, and there are times when they cannot get a break for a cup of tea. They are working through their breaks because they see the trauma in the faces of those in front of them. They are trying to work their way through this trauma, and I would describe that as grossly unfair. Community welfare officers have received no additional staff at all. That may be because they are hired by the HSE. We are all familiar with them and we all have had occasion to make representations to them. In many cases, these people also have to go out and hold clinics in other offices, which puts them under huge pressure.

I commend the Money Advice and Budgeting Service on its work, which is absolutely brilliant. The service is grossly understaffed and is under huge pressure. The Minister spoke about 252 people, but I wonder was she referring to 252 additional people. One element of the work done by MABS relates to the banks. I must come to Dublin next Friday with a constituent to negotiate with a bank on her behalf, as she is in serious difficulty due to the economic situation. It is ludicrous that we must travel with constituents to help them negotiate with banks. Something needs to be done with these banks to ease pressure on householders, rather than getting into this mess whereby public representatives must negotiate on their behalf.

I would have loved time to talk about debt collection, which is also a serious issue. People are going to prison for failure to repay debt. We will see if Seánie FitzPatrick and his friends will go to prison for their carry on, although I very much doubt it. However, there are people going to prison up for up to 20 days for very minor outstanding debts.

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