Tom Shehan (Fine Gael)

I want to raise an issue concerning representations I received in my office from a lady regarding her social welfare payments. She qualifies for and is receiving lone parent's allowance and she has two children but is only receiving payment for one of those children. She applied for the second child's payment on 7 October 2010 but her deciding officer did not examine the case for over a year. Then her social welfare inspector moved from the Tralee office in November to Cork and since last November the social welfare inspector position for her area and the surrounding areas has been left vacant and nobody is deciding on any social welfare cases in that area. There is no deciding officer and no social welfare inspector to deal with all such cases due for review since last November.

A source within the social welfare office in Tralee informed me that the new inspector is due to start in the coming weeks. This is in response to our investigations. For the past eight months a large portion of Kerry has not had a social welfare inspector dealing with cases. The same source within the social welfare office told me that they did not have anyone to fill the vacancy due to the number of people who retired from the office last February. This begs the question as to what good the Croke Park agreement is when we cannot address situations such as this. Are we not supposed to be able to transfer staff between Departments, functions and areas. I call on the Leader to request the Ministers, Deputy Howlin and Deputy Burton, to come to the House to debate this as a matter of urgency.