Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Agreement has been reached with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform for an additional 289 staff for the Department, of whom approximately 80 will be allocated to community welfare service. These staff will be at all grades and will increase the capacity of the community welfare officers to focus on making decisions on complex applications and meeting with claimants locally, as required. We have approval and it is going ahead. A process has to be got through but resources will be increased in that area as quickly as possible.

The Deputy has heard me say many times that this is the State safety net. We want people to have access to this money but we want to put checks in place, which the Deputy can understand, because not every application will qualify. Many applications are coming in. We have made a number of changes to try to simplify the process and make it easier for people to access the additional needs payment and we have the national helpline phone number. We also developed the new income guidelines aligned with those for the working family payment, which we put up on our website, while still ensuring that the local community welfare office has discretion. We got rid of the 30-hour rule. We also ran two major public awareness campaigns with radio adverts and much social media, which I know the Deputy has welcomed.

The campaign has worked. More people are aware that this available to help them out and there are more people applying for it. We have approved more than 66,000 applications to the end of September. That is a 60% increase on the same period last year. There is a massive increase by any yardstick. In fairness, the community welfare officers throughout the country are doing a great job to help people and we all know that. They help people out when they need it.

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