John Cummins (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for taking the Commencement matter. She will agree that the work civil registration offices do daily to register births, deaths and marriages is invaluable. The staff in all of these offices are to be commended on the work they do. She will also agree with the importance of this essential service being located in areas that are easily accessible to the public and do not place an undue burden on the public when seeking to access such services, especially given the sensitivities around registering deaths and the importance of timely registration of births to access support payments. Two locations are designated for civil registrations in County Waterford: Dungarvan and Waterford city. However, it has come to my attention that the Dungarvan office is temporarily closed and the Waterford city office has had its opening hours reduced to three days a week due to staffing constraints. This is having a serious impact on the public in Waterford. It is not an acceptable situating to me as a public representative. If I was to close my constituency office in Dungarvan and restrict the opening hours of my constituency office in Waterford city to three days a week, I would not be providing a sufficient service to the public. That is the case at the moment with regards to civil registration.

For the purpose of this Commencement matter, I went online to book an appointment to register a birth in counties Wexford, Kilkenny and Tipperary. I was able to get an appointment this week or early next week in all of those locations. However, in Waterford, the earliest appointment I could get was 26 November, seven weeks away. That is not a tenable situation. The same goes for registering a death, which is even more sensitive. If I did this in Wexford, Kilkenny or Tipperary, I could get an appointment tomorrow whereas in Waterford, the earliest appointment is 19 November, six weeks away. Again, this is an untenable situation. It does not take a genius to figure out that an office in Dungarvan is going to be closed temporarily, there will be an additional strain on the office in the Waterford city. To have that reduced in tandem to three days a week is not working.It is not acceptable that the temporary redeployment of staff to ensure a sufficient service has not happened. It should not take me raising it in Seanad Éireann for human resources to effect this change. When I raised the matter with the office for the general register, the response I received was that in line with HSE recruitment policy, it has sought to backfill its vacant positions in both Dungarvan and Waterford but that with the current HSE recruitment restrictions, this is still in progress. The response continued that if the office receives approval to do so, it will proceed with recruitment, training and reinstatement of services. It noted that while the office had explored all options to provide cross-cover regionally, with current staffing levels it was not possible to provide previous levels of service.

I do not believe that sufficient effort has been made to provide that cross-cover regionally because if I can access an appointment in Kilkenny, Wexford or Tipperary tomorrow, and I cannot do so for six or seven weeks in Waterford, that is not providing cross-cover regionally. It also seems bizarre that the HSE is responsible for staffing this service, whereas the Department of Social Protection is in charge of civil registrations on the whole. This has to be addressed urgently. While I understand there have been some developments in registering births online literally in recent weeks, that is not the case for deaths. It is not acceptable that people in Waterford have to wait so long. This staffing issue needs to be addressed. If it means taking staff from other locations to fill the void in the short term while recruitment is ongoing, that needs to happen and it needs to start today.