John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing my time with Deputies Denise Mitchell and Eoin Ó Broin.

The single biggest question to be asked here tonight is why restructuring is being proposed in the first place. What are the intentions of the Department of Social Protection and the CIB as regards these plans? It is ridiculous that neither MABS nor the CIS has been given any explanation whatsoever as to the rationale for the planned restructuring. Reasons such as governance, accountability and value for money have been cited by the CIB but it seems incapable of going any further than that. Can the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Leo Varadkar, clarify, therefore, what the issues are in respect of governance, accountability and value for money? These are questions that must be answered, at the very least. They are the questions that the Minister must answer.

MABS and the CIS provide a first-class and unique service. Everyone in the House would agree with that. With so much red tape and bureaucracy across the board, the CIS provides valuable information for people on a range of issues. MABS deals with some of the most vulnerable people in our communities on a daily basis, including those struggling to pay debts and those in mortgage distress. We know that support and assistance provided by MABS have been the difference between a family's home being repossessed and its being protected. We see this excellent work being replicated in schemes such as Abhaile, which has been rolled out.

The way in which these decisions have been made and the way in which MABS and the CIS have been informed have been totally underhand. While the CIB has stated lengthy and extensive consultation took place, MABS and the CIS beg to differ. There was no engagement with those on the front line of MABS or the CIS. Those best placed to understand the realities and challenges of service delivery have been ignored in the decision-making process. The entire process undertaken by the CIB and the Department in the restructuring plans raises real concerns over the real intention behind these changes.

In February, when plans to regionalise MABS offices became apparent, Sinn Féin facilitated MABS to come here and brief all Oireachtas Members on its concerns. On the back of this meeting, I requested that the Joint Committee on Social Protection invite stakeholders in to discuss and examine these plans. The committee report on this will be produced next week. I hope the Minister will accept an invitation to appear before the committee with this report in mind. Unfortunately, it has to be said Fianna Fáil saw this issue as a political opportunity and hence we see this motion before us tonight. Having said that, what is important first and foremost is the protection of the services as they are.

On consulting MABS on the motion last week, I submitted an amendment to remove the call for a cost-benefit analysis of the restructuring process. Given the voluntary nature of the services of MABS and the CIS as they are, I do not regard a cost-benefit analysis as being necessary. MABS has also said this. MABS itself has carried out a cost-benefit analysis. It has found it will cost €1 million to wind down the current services and that a new regionalised model will cost between €2.2 and €2.3 million, which represents considerable and unnecessary use of taxpayers' money.

Our amendment calls on the Minister to ensure the existing model, whereby independent management of the service is drawn from the local community and voluntary sector, is maintained. We cannot allow the community aspect of both MABS and the CIS to be lost. This will be the case if the restructuring goes ahead. Instead of 93 voluntary companies based in their communities, we will see eight regional companies that will be far removed from the communities they serve. There is nothing positive or beneficial to the citizen in this case.

Central to the work of MABS and the CIS are the volunteers who selflessly give their time to provide help and advice to others. The importance of this cannot be stressed enough. How, therefore, does the CIB propose to attract and retain unpaid boards for regional structures? Has the cost of the loss of volunteers been considered in all this? We have already seen volunteers walking away, disillusioned over the lack of any consultation with them and fearful for the structure of the services as they are. Both MABS and the CIS have stated volunteers are walking away. As mentioned at a hearing of the social protection committee, volunteers are walking away in Dún Laoghaire. Local involvement will be lost. The entire ethos on which MABS is built, which has made it so successful to date, will be lost.

When the Minister could be considering fixing the many issues affecting his Department, including those associated with child poverty, youth unemployment, lone parents, job activation schemes or any number of others, he is instead focusing on fixing something that is not broken in the first place. With the CIB, the Minister has failed to demonstrate with actual evidence the existence of a problem, the solution to which he believes is regionalisation. The Minister can do what was done by the late Séamus Brennan back in 2007, that is, issue a directive to the CIB, halt the regionalisation and do so in the best interest of the most vulnerable in society, which he claims time and again to have at the core of everything he does. I ask the Minister to do this without hesitation.

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