Maurice Quinlivan (Limerick City, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

In her response the Minister of State said that where it is obvious a person has an immediate need, every effort is made to ensure he or she receives a payment on the day. That used to be the case but the reason I am raising this issue is that it is not the case anymore, unfortunately. It is fine for us to stand here and discuss figures and percentages, but the reality is that the people who are most in need are not receiving payments from the Department in a timely manner. That is the problem I am trying to raise. There are people waiting 12 weeks for decisions on initial applications for long-term payments such as the invalidity pension, the disability allowance and the carer's allowance, and people waiting up to ten weeks for an exceptional needs payment. These are good people who, in many cases, have never contacted the Department previously. Many are providing an invaluable service to both the community and to the State. They apply for these payments out of necessity. They are not doing it for anything else.

I encourage the Minister for Social Protection to put the application form online. It would make it much handier seeing as the Government is centralising the service, which is a mistake. This is the minimum people should expect from the State during a stressful period of their lives. The community welfare service, which exists to help, should be able to step in immediately when people are most in need, be in good working order and be able to deliver on these needs promptly, as had always been the case. The centralisation of these processes seems to have been done in a rushed manner, with confirmation of the change provided after it had become a fait accompli. Since then, timelines for applications have increased on a near weekly basis. Timelines have jumped from six weeks when the community welfare service was first centralised, to eight and then ten weeks, and now the responses from the Department are without a specified timeline. As this centralisation has not worked, the community aspect has been removed from what was supposedly a community service. It is now just a welfare service. We have made a big mistake in the centralisation of it. It used to be that the CWO would know the people coming in and it was an easier service to administer. It is taking too long.

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