Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Labour)
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Question 114: To ask the Minister for Social and Family Affairs the steps she has taken to ensure that services to the public are not affected by the work to rule in her Department. [8911/10]

John O'Mahony (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Question 402: To ask the Minister for Social and Family Affairs her plans to address the non-answering of Parliamentary Question submitted to her Department; if her attention has been drawn to the fact that staff in her Department will not take calls on the Oireachtas lines provided to help access information; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [9223/10]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 114 and 402 together.

Staff represented by the CPSE, PSEU and IMPACT have been engaged in industrial action in my Department for the past number of weeks. The main purpose of the Department is to provide income maintenance services to the public and consequently, the Department's staff are engaged in work that either directly delivers services to the public or that supports the delivery of those services. Given the nature of the Department's work, it is simply not possible to ensure that services to the public are not affected by the current work to rule and related actions.

The action taken to date has mainly been in the form of not answering phones, not dealing with the public at certain times during the normal working day, not covering for certain staff absences or where there are vacancies and not responding to queries from public representatives by way of telephone or through Parliamentary Questions. Staff are continuing to take and process claims and while the industrial action has had a negative effect on service delivery, the impact to date has been limited.

The overall management response to the industrial action is being managed centrally by the Department of Finance with input from all Government Departments, including my Department, and other public service sectors. The industrial action is being monitored carefully on a daily basis and the Department's management is maintaining contacts with the unions concerned to ensure, insofar as possible, that the negative impact on the Department's customers is minimised.