Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

8. To ask the Minister for Social Protection the steps she will take to ensure that the customer charter action plan of her Department is implemented in all local and district offices; and the steps that are open to those who believe it has been breached. [43679/13]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The Department is committed to ensuring that a customer service ethos is embedded in everything it does and is embraced by everyone in the Department. Significant effort was made to ensure that the highest customer service standards are achieved and these standards are set out in the customer charter and developed further in the Customer Action Plan 2013-2015. The Department employs a range of mechanisms to measure and evaluate performance against the standards set out in the customer action plan. These include regular meetings with customers, stakeholders and staff to get feedback and suggestions on how the Department can improve its service provision and delivery.

As Minister, I regularly meet all of the organisations involved in advocating or service provision in social protection areas. The Department also employs dedicated resources within all business areas in the Department dedicated to the management of all comments and complaints received; the use of internal management information systems to inform customer service policies; and monitoring and evaluation of complaints received through the Department’s comments and complaints system. Senior management in the organisation review the customer action plan at regular intervals and measure its performance against the service standards. Achievements in service standards are reported in the Department’s annual report.

As Minister, I regard it as really important that the people who used the Department services get a good quality service. We have put major investment into clearing the backlog that I, as Minister, inherited in respect of areas such as domiciliary care allowance, family income supplement, applications for carers and applications for a number of other areas. We have cleared all of those backlogs and we are now working strongly to clear the backlog on disability. This takes place in the context of demand for the Department's services having exploded from the period of 2008 to date.

Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

This was tabled by Deputy Clare Daly but both of us received phone calls from people, mainly from people who had not previously visited social welfare offices. Some people were surprised at being poorly treated when they went there. In some cases they felt patronised and demeaned. In some offices, there is a customer action plan and information is displayed on how people should be treated.

Seán Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, Ceann Comhairle)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

A question please, Deputy.

Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Is it possible to check that such notices are always displayed in the offices? It would be no harm if a circular was sent to people to remind staff that people coming in have not done anything wrong and should be treated with respect.

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I am interested in hearing about any experience of poor service that does not meet the standards set out in the charter. Perhaps the Deputy is talking about service in a particular area and perhaps Deputy Wallace or Deputy Clare Daly can contact the manager of the office. We issue a large volume of payments and award entitlements to people. The Department processes some 87 million payment transactions a year, a huge volume of transactions. It is important that where there are complaints, we are made aware of them. I do not know if the Deputy is talking about a particular office and perhaps I will talk to him privately about it. At the moment, we are rolling out the new Intreo service offices. In the new offices, there is more privacy and there is room for people to sit down. There are new identity cards and automatic sign-in, which means business can be done more efficiently and in a more modern way.

We have also undertaken group engagement. New jobseekers are brought in in groups of 20. It is all about telling people what is available in terms of education. We get feedback from people thanking us for informing them of something they did not know about.

We have more offices to roll out and some of the offices leave much to be desired. I regularly visit offices around the country. The OPW are our agents to upgrade and refurbish the offices. Deputy Wallace is in the trade and it is taking three years to upgrade the offices. The Minister in Deputy Wallace's constituency, Deputy Brendan Howlin, has made available an extra €9 million to the OPW via the Department to carry out upgrades of the offices between this year and next year. Perhaps we can have a private discussion if the Deputy has a particular office in mind.