John McGahon (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I call for a debate on social welfare offices across this country. Before Christmas, the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, outlined some of the extra supports she has put in place, such as the ability to move staff from other sectors of social protection into our social welfare offices to try to process applications as quickly as possible. The reason I am raising this matter today is because in my home town of Dundalk, people are now waiting seven, eight, nine or ten weeks for basic financial and emergency assistance. That assistance comes in the form of, for example, the white appliances allowance. Everyone in this House will know that when someone gets a new council house, they can apply for kitchen appliances like a cooker or a washing machine, for flooring or for other items like bedframes. This basic stuff is needed to move into an unfurnished house. In previous times that application might take a maximum of two weeks. People who were offered brand new homes in the first week of November put these applications in at that time but they have still not been processed. It is the same for those who apply for emergency funding for a deposit. They need €1,000 or €1,200 for a deposit straight away but they are now having to wait four, five, six or seven weeks. It is not the fault of staff in social welfare offices either. They are simply being overwhelmed by the huge volume of applications coming into them. I would like to call for a debate to find out exactly what the Minister's plans are to cut down these times, as she outlined before Christmas. I had a Commencement debate earlier today about work permits and the work that was done in the Department to cut dramatically the timeframe for processing applications. There is certainly a way to resolve and fix this. I would really appreciate if we could have a debate about that and what the Minister intends to do about it. To put it bluntly, it is simply not acceptable that someone has to wait a minimum of two months for a basic emergency funding application to be processed. We need to fix it. We need to figure out how to fix it, and we need to streamline those applications to get them across the line as quickly as possible.