Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputies.

Let me explain a little of the background. Some 1,000 staff transferred from the HSE to the Department of Social Protection in October 2011. At that time, my Department took over 900 clinics, many of which were situated at crossroads and in hotels, as the Deputies will be aware, for an hour, a half-hour or even, in some cases, ten minutes.

Previously, a large part of the work of a community welfare officer was providing supplementary welfare payments. With the transformation of the service, when somebody goes into the new Intreo office and identifies what he or she wants to claim - for instance, jobseeker's allowance - by and large, the person will get it within a week.

The following may be of some reassurance to the Deputies, because I understand why they are concerned about it. To date, we have closed 268 clinics, and to be perfectly honest, we really have not received the kind of negative feedback about which the Deputies are apprehensive. Of course, I will bear in mind Deputy Pringle's request that we keep the situation under review.

The Department provides a telephone service and in special cases of illness, for example, it will send an official to the home. It will have an extra 300 officials available whose work it will be to get people back to work. I refer the Deputies to the significant support provided by my Department for community employment and Tús schemes in their areas. It identifies and selects those eligible to participate in these schemes. Therefore, there is a significant level of work being carried out by the Department. From my travels around the country and in the areas represented by the Deputies, I know about the significant contribution of some of these schemes to the different areas all this year, including the Tidy Towns competition and The Gathering. I ask the Deputies to be aware that the work of activation, particularly the expansion of community employment scheme opportunities, Tús and other schemes, has produced a significant dividend at local level in the areas to which they have referred. This is a trade-off arrangement which I undertake to keep under review. That is why we gave everyone involved very detailed information in advance. We will certainly keep the conversation going.

I thank Deputy Dara Calleary for his comments on the domiciliary care allowance. I have said in the House that we took on the job to revamp the IT platform. This was a risk and it took quite an amount of time, but we have now cleared the backlogs in respect of domiciliary care allowance and carer's allowance. Not everyone who applies is eligible, but those with a clear, solid and substantial application will receive an allowance. This also applies to family income supplement and the Department is now able to be more up to date on changes in family circumstances. These reforms, although painful for many Deputies, have produced a significant gain. I hope when we come to discuss the matter in the future, we will see similar gains to the benefit of everyone in the local community, as well as getting people back to work.

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