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

If the Deputy wants to give me those details, I will follow up on them and find exactly what the case was. There have been other incidents where people have come forward with details, and when I looked them up, I discovered they were somewhat different from what was initially anticipated. While I fully accept the bona fides of the cases the Deputy raised, I would like to look into them to see exactly what happened because we have put every effort into reducing the length of time within which a decision is made.

Community welfare officers are available to meet people. They can do so by appointment and there is no problem in doing that. If members of the public visit an Intreo office, they can meet the officers face to face. We have increased the number of staff in the offices and, as I said, we processed 97,000 payments last year. That is a lot of processing. There is no backlog and we are down to two weeks. While some cases will take slightly longer, that is most likely because applicants have not got all the information they need. Each case is individual. As I said, I will be happy to look at the two specific cases the Deputy brought to my attention.

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