Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am interested in hearing about any experience of poor service that does not meet the standards set out in the charter. Perhaps the Deputy is talking about service in a particular area and perhaps Deputy Wallace or Deputy Clare Daly can contact the manager of the office. We issue a large volume of payments and award entitlements to people. The Department processes some 87 million payment transactions a year, a huge volume of transactions. It is important that where there are complaints, we are made aware of them. I do not know if the Deputy is talking about a particular office and perhaps I will talk to him privately about it. At the moment, we are rolling out the new Intreo service offices. In the new offices, there is more privacy and there is room for people to sit down. There are new identity cards and automatic sign-in, which means business can be done more efficiently and in a more modern way.

We have also undertaken group engagement. New jobseekers are brought in in groups of 20. It is all about telling people what is available in terms of education. We get feedback from people thanking us for informing them of something they did not know about.

We have more offices to roll out and some of the offices leave much to be desired. I regularly visit offices around the country. The OPW are our agents to upgrade and refurbish the offices. Deputy Wallace is in the trade and it is taking three years to upgrade the offices. The Minister in Deputy Wallace's constituency, Deputy Brendan Howlin, has made available an extra €9 million to the OPW via the Department to carry out upgrades of the offices between this year and next year. Perhaps we can have a private discussion if the Deputy has a particular office in mind.

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