Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)
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57. To ask the Minister for Social Protection her plans to provide extra staff to alleviate queuing times on signing days for payment of jobseeker's allowance; if she is aware that recipients on these days are being exposed to the elements while waiting in the lengthy queues outside the social welfare offices; her further plans to provide adequate shelter for recipients; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [12492/15]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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I am not aware of any particular problems in relation to queuing at the Department's offices. Should the Deputy have specific instances in mind, I would be very happy to have them investigated.

Intreo is the new integrated income support, employment and support service which is now provided by the Department. Intreo, which was launched in 2012, has delivered significant office accommodation improvements with the conversion of 'Social Welfare Local Offices' into 'Intreo Centres'. There are currently 47 fully functional Intreo centres across the country with three further offices nearing completion. Work is proceeding on the remaining 15 offices.

The Intreo Centre is a one-stop shop for all income and employment support services where customers can access job-seeking advice, information on vacancies and income support services all in the one place.

Long queues outside offices were unfortunately a feature when the live register was at its height but customer service has generally improved with the development of Intreo, and the streamlining of claims-taking processes with quicker payment times but also direct referral of jobseekers to a range of activation supports.

Overall, the response to the Department's Intreo project has been very positive as evidenced by an October 2014 report from the INOU which highlighted the steps being taken by the Department's Intreo process to reduce both queueing within offices and overall claims processing times.

During 2014, the Intreo/local office network processed some 500,000 claims, hosted over 186,000 at group information sessions (an increase of 50% on the previous year) and conducted more than 330,000 one-to-one interviews.

In parallel with office accommodation improvements, the Department has also embarked on a significant system modernisation programme and has been rolling out improved systems to Intreo Centres which maximise the use of technology for greater efficiency and improved customer service.

In relation to signing, the most important business improvement has been a switch to 'electronic signing'. This system functionality now provides offices with the capacity to capture a signature on an electronic signature pad as part of the certification process for fully unemployed clients. This improvement has eliminated a paper-based system and has introduced greater flexibility to the signing process. In effect it means that jobseekers can now sign at multiple customer service points in the Intreo Centre with consequential reduction in waiting times and long queues.

Intreo Centres now have the facility to respond immediately to emerging queues by opening and closing counters, as required, to deal with peaks which might arise at any particular time rather than being limited to having a set fixed number of counter points open. This enables offices to reduce queuing times and provide a higher quality of customer service.

In addition, it would be normal for Intreo Centres to stagger the signing times for jobseekers so as to spread out the numbers attending in an office at any particular time but also to reduce queues and waiting times. Where customers adhere to their allotted 'signing time', queueing is further reduced.