Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party)
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122. To ask the Minister for Social Protection the areas nationally where social welfare offices were closed in the past two years; and if she will justify the rationale for same. [42978/13]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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As the Deputy will be aware the Department assumed responsibility for the Community Welfare Service (CWS) from the HSE in October 2011 and the FÁS Employment & Community services in January 2012. The Department is currently examining the operation of all its services in the context of the Pathways to Work commitments and the development of Intreo services nationally. The Pathways to Work Programme represents a significant reform in the social welfare system and highlighted the need for the Department to focus its resources on the provision of opportunities, supports and assistance to unemployed people. The Department is intensifying its level of engagement with the unemployed, in particular, those who are, or become, long-term unemployed. The new Intreo service offers practical, tailored employment services and supports for jobseekers, a model which is currently being rolled out across the country. It is expected that three hundred staff will be redeployed to activation work from within the Department’s existing resources by the end of the year.

Overall, this is resulting in a rebalancing of resources across the Department’s range of activities including the relocation of some staff to main centres, primarily Intreo offices, which will provide a full range of services, including the CWS and these will, in general, be available in one location. While there has been no closure of local or branch offices in the last two years, some 300 CWS clinics across the country have been re-structured during 2012 and 2013 as well as a small number of former FÁS offices. This included offices where limited weekly CWS public clinics were held, in some cases for only one to two hours per week.

Where the community welfare service has been re-structured, alternative arrangements have been put in place to ensure that customers are provided with on-going access to the supports provided by the service. In general, this means that the frequency of available public clinics will be increased. The staffing needs for all areas within the Department are continuously reviewed, 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 and that the services provided are reconstituted, where necessary, to meet the changing needs of Irish society.