Marie Moloney (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister back to the House. While the main function of the Department of Social Protection is the delivery of income support, it has now moved into the area of tackling unemployment through activation. It is also proactive in the control of fraud and abuse.

The Department of Social Protection is responsible for 87 million payments per year at a cost of ¤20.5 billion, which is 40% of the overall Government spend. That is a huge responsibility, and being at the helm of this Department is an onerous job for the Minister. I assure her I would not like to take it on.

Last Tuesday the members of the Joint Committee on Education and Social Protection met with officials of the Department and raised all our concerns with them, many of which the Minister will hear on the floor of the House today. We had an informative meeting with the officials who outlined in detail for us the challenges of delivering a service with limited staff, streamlining the services and making changes that will deliver a more user friendly, informative and activation service to the people.

The official launch of the Intreo office in Sligo last week is testament to that. That will be a great service in that people will be able to go into a one stop shop and meet one official who will deal with all their problems. Until now, if people applied for jobseeker's allowance it would take up to 14 weeks to process in some cases and if people wanted to apply for supplementary welfare in the meantime they would have to complete all the forms again and provide all the documentation to a different person. The need for that will be eliminated with the establishment of Intreo. We have been advised by the officials, and I am taking them at their word, that the Department will be able to process applications in four days provided no major problems arise. That is a great step forward. The service launched in Sligo is up and running, as the Minister has told us, in a number of areas but it must be rolled out to other areas before the end of the year such as Ballymun, Buncrana, Dundalk, Coolock, Finglas and, I am delighted to say, Killarney.