John Moloney (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

I apologise to the Deputy that the Minister for Social and Family Affairs, Deputy Mary Hanafin, cannot be here to respond to the Adjournment debate.

I wish to explain on her behalf that no staff of the Department of Social and Family Affairs are being made redundant, either in Wexford town or any other location. From time to time, the Department recruits temporary staff for a variety of reasons. Temporary staff are primarily recruited to cover temporary absences of permanent staff arising from maternity or adoptive leave or long-term illnesses. On occasions temporary staff are used to cover permanent vacancies when there is likely to be a significant delay in getting permanent replacement staff. There are two types of contract offered to temporary staff, that is, contracts for a defined purpose and contracts for a defined period. These types of contract are used to ensure transparency of circumstances giving rise to the need to employ temporary staff. It is not possible for the Department to offer contracts of indefinite duration as this would lead to the accrual of unintended employment rights. Additionally, it is not possible or permitted for the Department to recruit temporary staff directly into permanent positions.

In 2008, two temporary clerical staff were recruited on a defined purpose contract to serve in the social welfare local office in Wexford to cover the absence of two permanent members of staff. One of the two was recruited initially on a three-month defined period contract. That person was then retained on a defined purpose contract to cover for that absence. Subsequently, both staff absences became permanent vacancies.

Permanent staff, through redeployment from other Government Departments, have now been sourced for the two permanent vacancies and both persons on temporary contract have been given two weeks' notice to expire on 26 February 2010, following an overlap period to allow for the training of the new staff.

In order to deal effectively with the increasing workload the Department of Social and Family Affairs has tackled the issues in a number of ways. Additional staff have been assigned to the offices including investigative staff, centralised decision making sections have been set up in a number of areas and a number of process improvement initiatives have been introduced.

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