Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

We have a litany of people who are distressed. That is the problem. This is still going on. We do not want to be dealing with this every day in our office when we could be doing much more useful work. This is down to mistakes the Minister's Department made in the changeover in the system. We are only getting a percentage of the people involved. While we do not, admittedly, get the people who are happy, people with problems are still coming to us. As such, it must still be happening. It is not acceptable to say it is the normal percentage of people who will never be happy because we did not have this before the system was changed. If it was normal, it would have been going on all the time. These people need timely, prompt decisions so that they can manage, which they cannot do at the moment. The length of time it is taking to make decisions is causing major harm to people. The Department must recognise that.

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