Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

Community welfare officers will be transferring from the HSE to the Department of Social Protection, and those arrangements should be completed, as the Deputy mentioned, by the end of September. The position of community welfare officer will still exist even though, because people will have payments processed in their local offices, the need for supplementary payments should decrease over time, and community welfare officers will spend more time dealing with exceptional needs cases. That is certainly the intention. I do not think there will be any requirement for changes in the legislation in the short term. However, it is important the arrangements for recovering fraudulent social welfare overpayments are in place.

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