Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

To be fair, I do not think that is very fair. What I wanted to see was the ramping up of those supports to ensure that people knew they were there in order to access them. Of course, if numbers were low earlier in the year, such as in February and March when they were between 4,000 or 5,000, there was concern. The Department did all that work on advertising and campaigning. That is what I wanted to see and that is welcome, but when ramping things up, demand will obviously increase, and we need to make sure people are not waiting up to 8 weeks for a payment, which they were in September. People have waited two months. Some 95% of applications in September were finalised between five to eight weeks. That is my issue. It is a fair issue to raise because if the Minister is encouraging people to apply for a payment, which I have asked her to do and I have no issue with, people must get that support in a timely manner. These are supposed to be emergency payments and it is fair of me to raise this with her. I put forward the idea of putting the process online not to complain about the fall-off, but to ensure people had every opportunity to access the support.

A comprehensive review was undertaken in 2021 of all services and activities delivered by the Department's network of local offices, which came as news to me. Will that review be published?

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