John Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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Question 244: To ask the Minister for Social Protection when the FÁS office in Enniscorthy, County Wexford, will be opened on a five-day per week basis, as it operates only on a three-day week at present due to lack of staff. [14316/12]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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I am very conscious of the need to provide efficient and effective customer facing services at a local level for clients of the Department in Wexford and every other part of the country. However, as the Deputy will be aware, there is currently a moratorium on recruitment across the civil and public service. Where vacancies arise, I assure the Deputy that the Department is expending every effort to continue to source available staff to fill critical vacancies, including those arising from retirements, by way of redeployment, or transfer from within the Department and other Government Departments, taking account of the Employment Control Framework (ECF) target, as determined by the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform.

The staffing needs for all areas within the Department are continuously reviewed, having regard to workloads, management priorities and the competing demands arising, to ensure that the best use is made of all available resources with a view to providing an efficient service to those who rely on the schemes operated by the Department. At this time it is not possible to give a definitive timeline for resumption of 5 day opening in the Enniscorthy office.

In order to offer a more streamlined, efficient and integrated service to clients, the Department is undergoing a process of intensive planning and organisational change in establishing the new National Employment and Entitlements Service (NEES), which will bring together the Community Welfare Service (CWS), the Employment Services and Community Employment Programmes of FÁS, the Rural Social Scheme and Community Services Programme from the former Department of Community, Equality and the Gaeltacht and the Redundancy and Insolvency Schemes from the former Department of Enterprise, Trade and Innovation. It is the intention that the NEES will integrate all employment and benefit support services in a single delivery unit, to provide a coherent integrated and more personalised service to clients. It is hoped that this integrating process will also deliver new opportunities to support service delivery at the local level.