Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

That is a very sensible suggestion. As the community welfare officers move into the Department, this is an area where they in particular probably have enhanced experience and sensitivity. Perhaps we can have better advisory services and a better quality of information available in citizens information centres. Various organisations supply excellent information which enables people to make a much more directed application that is likely to be successful. We will return to this topic as, hopefully, we reduce the backlog and we will see what can be done to streamline and improve the quality of the application process.

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