Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Labour)
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Question 453: To ask the Minister for Social and Family Affairs the longest and average wait for the processing of a jobseeker's benefit claim and a jobseeker's allowance claim respectively in each of her Department's offices; the number, respectively, of staff in whole-time equivalent terms and of accumulative staff hours allocated to each of these offices in November 2008 and the respective numbers in the same month in 2006 and 2007; if she has identified whether the backlog is due to lack of staff numbers to deal with the extra demand, productivity issues or another reason; if she will provide details of same; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [39268/08]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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The Department delivers a front-line service through a network of 61 Local Offices and 64 Branch Offices countrywide. The main services provided from these offices include jobseeker's payment, one-parent family payment and an information service.

Branch Offices are operated under a contract for service and decisions on claims taken in Branch Offices are made in its departmental parent Local Office.

There has been a significant increase in the number of people claiming since the beginning of the year. The level of inflows to the Live Register over the period January to September 2008 inclusive was 311,660 as compared to 220,652 over the corresponding period last year representing an increase of over 41%.

In the past few years the Department has coped with increasing demands arising from significant changes to the social welfare code and in the numbers of persons accessing services. Operational procedures and the organisation of work continue to be reviewed and restructured to maximise the benefits of technology and new developments in processing techniques and business information.

The Department is committed to providing a quality customer service to all its customers. This includes ensuring that applications are processed and that decisions on entitlement are issued as expeditiously as possible having regard to the eligibility conditions which apply. These conditions vary between the two jobseeker schemes and involve, among other things, the need to establish the person's social insurance record, establish the person's identity or their place of habitual residence and to assess means where appropriate. In some cases delays arise where the person fails to supply all pertinent information in support of his/her application.

The overall performance in any individual office in processing claims can be adversely affected by a wide variety of factors; including increased inflow of claims, staff vacancies and the duration of such vacancies and the turnover of staff in the office.

For claims processed in October 2008 the average processing time was 3 weeks for jobseeker's benefit and 5 weeks for jobseeker's allowance. Details of the longest processing times in each office are not available. The average processing time in August in each office is given in Table 3. This is the latest month for which this level of detail is available.

A table (Table 1) showing the number of posts in each Local Office in each of the years 2006, 2007 and 2008 is set out below. September 2008 is the latest month for which this information is available. In some of the offices the numbers shown for September 2008 are lower than those applying in 2007. This is for a number of reasons including the point in time at which the staff numbers were determined, the loss of the PPS allocation function to a centralised location and staff vacancies at September 2008.

The Department's Management Services Unit, using a formal work measurement method, monitors staffing requirements across the Department including Local Offices. Determinations of staffing requirements undertaken on an office by office basis, was carried out over the period mid 2006 to mid 2008 and the resulting changes in staff numbers are reflected in the table.

In addition to this process, because of the increased number of claims for jobseeker payments the Department undertook a review of staffing levels in Local Offices in May and June of this year. This resulted in the assignment of an additional 31 staff to some 15 Local Offices. Following on the most recent review of the staffing levels in Local Offices, an additional 115 staff are to be assigned to some 48 offices.

Details of overtime expenditure are included in Table 2. Overtime is allocated to each Regional Manager who administers it in his/her region as required. Some overtime is used to deal with increasing claimloads. However, it is also used to cover additional work due to office reorganisation to accommodate the introduction of new measures e.g. the localisation of one-parent family claims, office refurbishment and peak periods in processing of certain types of claim e.g. annual influx of back-to-education claims in September/October and the annual review of such claims in the Spring. Overtime is also used to facilitate the release of staff in local offices to attend training courses, work-related seminars and workshops.

Details of the number of hours overtime worked at each office for the years 2006, 2007, and 2008 are not available.

In some of the offices the numbers shown for September 2008 are lower than those applying in 2007. This is for a number of reasons including the point in time at which the staff numbers were determined, the loss of the PPS allocation function to a centralised location and staff vacancies at September 2008.