Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

6. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if additional resources are being given to Intreo centres, in particular community welfare offices, in order to deal with the huge number of additional requests for supplementary welfare and exceptional needs payments; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [49886/22]

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

10. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the additional resources that were put in place to deal with the surge in applications for supplementary welfare allowance and additional needs payments, given that these are being promoted as a source of additional emergency income for those with increased energy costs; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [50716/22]

Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I want to ask the Minister if additional resources are being given to Intreo centres, in particular community welfare offices, in order to deal with the significant additional requests we are all aware of for supplementary welfare allowance and additional needs and exceptional needs payments, and if she can make a statement on the matter. There is a growing backlog that is holding back people on the housing list who want to move to new accommodation but cannot get payments.

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I proposed to take Question Nos. 6 and 10 together.

The delivery of crucial community welfare services to meet the challenges and needs of citizens across the country is a priority for me and my Department. I want to be absolutely clear that the Department continues to provide access to local community welfare officers in our public offices across the country and will continue to do so. Community welfare staff also attend local clinics and are available to attend at other locations including the client's home, if necessary. In addition, staffing levels have been maintained in the community welfare service nationwide in recent years, even during times when demands on the service decreased significantly. This reflects my commitment to continue to support the delivery of locally based services to citizens.

There are currently more than 400 staff working in the community welfare service throughout the country, with a permanent community welfare officer presence available at all times during working hours in over 50 of the Department's public offices. These staff have processed and paid 66,000 additional needs payments to the end of September, an increase of about 60% on 2021 levels, as well as managing applications for other supplementary welfare allowance schemes.

My Department has introduced a number of measures this year with the aim of increasing the capacity of the service and modernising and improving how it operates. These include the introduction of a national community welfare service freephone line, meaning clients do not have to attend the office in person to make a claim, the rostering of staff to ensure there is a full-time community welfare officer present in over 50 offices nationwide and the establishment of a back-office support team to take on the more routine administrative tasks associated with claim processing, freeing up front-line community welfare officers to meet customers and process their claims. In addition, the Department is well advanced in the development of an online claims option. These changes mean that the community welfare service is in a stronger position than it would otherwise have been to respond to the significant 60% increase in service demand. For example, 75% of calls to the national freephone line are dealt with and the claim decided without the client ever having to attend a public office.

The Department is also taking steps to allocate additional staff to the community welfare service function having received an increased staffing allocation during the Estimates process. I expect recruitment for these posts to begin shortly. It is the Department's plan to allocate an additional 80 staff to this service.

Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I welcome the fact that we are now looking at the recruitment of 80 staff. I do not think anybody who has been in a constituency office of any party over the past while will not consider that as an absolute necessity. What is the timeline? I am not taking away from the considerable work that has been done by community welfare officers and those working in administration in the back office but, the fact is that there is a considerable backlog. In fairness, some of that is down to our being in a cost-of-living crisis. People are under severe pressure. The advertising campaign that has been carried out has had a considerable impact. We have dealt with a considerable number of people who have been putting in genuine claims. I will be honest. Occasionally one comes across people and one is fairly sure they should not be making these claims. We generally try to deal with them at our office in order that they do not clog up the social protection offices.

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I listened to the Minister's reply earlier to Deputy Kerrane. I thank the community welfare officers and acknowledge the work done by them. The ones I know are certainly going above and beyond in trying to meet the needs of people who are in a very desperate situation. I welcome the measures that the Minister has outlined but I wish to know how long the recruitment process will be because I am concerned that might take weeks or even months. What are the target times? Will we be in a situation by Christmas in which the time is much reduced? How quickly will the online system be up and running? Will the Minister explain a bit more about people not having to go into the office? It is not the easiest thing in the world for people to try to gather bank statements. It can take quite a long time, especially for people who have literacy issues and are extremely marginalised. My real concern is about how they can access this as smoothly and as quickly as possible.

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | 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.

Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I ask for an update on the timeline for employing those 80 people. What target times are we looking at for processing the claims? We all get that considerable is being done and that is the reason more staff are being sought but Louth County Council informed us that it takes approximately six weeks for applications for white goods and floors. That can hold up people on the housing list in moving on and create a difficulty when looking for those. The properties that are being vacated should become available, because they're like hen's teeth at present with the housing crisis. Anything that can be done should be done.

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for her response and I hope that things will be speeded up. The message that needs to go out today is that people should not wait until the very last moment before contacting the community welfare officer. They should also know that there will be some length of time to wait. What I have been finding an awful lot, even before the most immediate pressures, is that people cannot afford to get to hospital appointments. If one is in Mayo and one has to try to get transport to one's hospital appointment, there is no public transport. That is a real need. That can wipe out somebody's whole income for the week, if they are on a social welfare payment. I ask for as much flexibility as possible around those payments in order that people can get to vital hospital appointments and get the money that they need.

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

If there are any especially long delays in any area, I ask that the Deputy bring them to my attention and I will be happy address them and see whether there is a problem that we need to sort out. The Deputy was right when she said that people should not wait until the last minute to go to the community welfare officer. If they think there will be a problem, they should put in their application as to what it would be. The average is four weeks but an urgent need will be dealt with straight away.

I was at an event last week to celebrate 30 years of the Money Advice & Budgeting Service, MABS. I was talking to some of the MABS people who said that there is a good relationship between MABS and the community welfare officers. When MABS said that it needs the help, it usually gets the payments straight away. There are other ways to approach this as well and if some people who have particular difficulties are concerned, they should go to the local MABS office.

Deputy Kerrane asked me about a review in 2021 and I wished to answer but I ran out of time. As is the case with any large customer service organisation, the Department is constantly reviewing and refining its operational procedures and management structures. As part of this ongoing process, the Department made some changes to how it organised the processing of the Intreo claims centre in 2021, to take account of remote working and blended working developments and to ensure that staff workloads could be balanced. It also made some changes to management reporting lines.

The review did not involve any changes to Intreo centre locations or services available to the public at Intreo centres. As is normal practice, these changes were discussed with staff unions and have been in place since January 2022. Ongoing regular reviews of internal structure and processes are normal in any operational environment. These routine operational reviews do not involve any change to customer benefits or entitlements but represent normal business process change and refinement. It is not the practice to publish internal reviews.