Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party)
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Question 61: To ask the Minister for Social Protection if she will reverse the decision to close the community welfare office service in Malahide, Dublin, from 20 March 2012, forcing residents to attend at Kilbarrack, Dublin, to access this service. [14746/12]

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. 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. It was in this context that the decision was made to relocate community welfare services from Malahide to Kilbarrack following the retirement of a staff member and other staffing issues.

As part of a reconfiguration of services, the community welfare clinic currently operating in Malahide will relocate to Kilbarrack Health Centre from Tuesday 20 March 2012. This measure is required in order to maintain continued public access to the service for customers currently covered by the community welfare service in Malahide.

A factor taken into account in the reconfiguration of services was the good public transport services from Malahide to Kilbarrack, with Dart and bus access to Kilbarrack Health Centre, which is 5 minutes walk from the nearest train station or bus stop.

There is also the facility for clients who are unable to travel to Kilbarrack, for example due to illness, to phone the community welfare service in Kilbarrack and discuss their case and, if required, the officer may arrange a visit to the client's home.

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.