Michael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Question 369: To ask the Minister for Social and Family Affairs the reason it is deemed necessary for County Mayo social welfare applicants to apply to her Department's office in Sligo for a statement of their payments for a calendar year rather than obtaining this information in their local social welfare office, as these statements are needed to support third level grant applications; the further reason it often takes weeks for such statements to issue from her Department and that there is no computerised system which would allow this information to issue from the local social welfare office; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [38125/08]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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Local Offices provide statements of benefit paid to customers in respect of the schemes administered at local level such as jobseeker's benefit and jobseeker's allowance. The Department is in the process of localising the One-Parent Family Payment Scheme to the network of local offices across the country. Where a One-Parent Family Payment claim is held at the local office, that office, of course will, provide a statement to the customer where required.

There is still a stock of One-Parent Family Payment claims administered centrally in the Social Welfare Services Office in Sligo. Requests for benefit statements for these claims are handled centrally where staff have access to all the relevant claim papers. The same applies to other schemes administered centrally such as State Pension, Widow's/Widower's Pension and Disability Allowance. While Local Office staff have computer access to certain payment details in relation to these claims, they do not have access to the claim papers which may contain additional information in relation to payments made to a customer. There is always a large increase in the number of requests for statements during September and October from those seeking college grants, rent reviews by Local Authorities and from customers making a self-employed tax return. Additional staff are deployed to issuing statements during this peak period and every effort is made to deal with these requests as speedily as possible. So far this year the Social Welfare Services Office in Sligo has received requests for almost 45,500 statements. The average processing time for these statements is less than 7 working days. In 2007, over 47,500 requests were received. Any customer who requests a statement by phone will be advised of the likely timeframe involved.