James Bannon (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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Question 170: To ask the Minister for Social and Family Affairs the control he has over his Department, as persons who are unemployed through no fault of their own are being refused assistance due to industrial action by his officials, which amounts to dereliction of their duty and his; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [13387/10]

James Bannon (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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Question 171: To ask the Minister for Social and Family Affairs if he is prepared to offer his resignation due to his inability to assist those persons who have been driven to despair and in some cases suicide by the lack of essential support from his Department; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [13388/10]

James Bannon (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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Question 172: To ask the Minister for Social and Family Affairs if he will resign due to his inability to run his Department efficiently, with essential assistance being delayed to an untenable level due to industrial action which has left his powerless and paralysed; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [13389/10]

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 170 to 172, inclusive, together.

Staff represented by the CPSE, PSEU and IMPACT have been engaged in industrial action in my Department since January 2010. 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. The CPSU has, additionally, instituted a ban on overtime working with effect from 15 March 2010. Staff are continuing to take and process claims and while the industrial action is having an increasingly negative effect on service delivery, the impact to date has been relatively limited. The initial impact of the CPSU ban on overtime working has been a 1 day delay in some 22,500 payments, mainly to recipients of Jobseeker and Illness payments.

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. It is completely unacceptable to me that people should experience delays in receiving their social welfare entitlements because of industrial action. However, the industrial action is being closely monitored in my Department 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. In the meantime, in circumstances where customers of the Department are experiencing hardship through delayed Social Welfare payments it is open to them to apply for assistance under the Supplementary Welfare Allowance scheme.