I welcome the opportunity to raise this very important issue. While I am grateful to the Minister of State at the Department of Health and Children for coming into the House to respond on behalf of the Minister – positively, I hope – given the seriousness of the matter, I am disappointed that the Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs is not responding.
As we approach the Christmas season, thousands of people throughout the State are experiencing major inconvenience and, in many cases, real financial hardship due to the ongoing dispute at the office of the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs in Letterkenny, County Donegal. Since this dispute escalated at the beginning of October, telephone and fax calls to the child benefit and treatment benefit sections at Letterkenny are not being answered. The long delay in processing child benefit is a very serious matter for people with children. A huge backlog has now built up and, even if the dispute is settled soon, it is difficult to see this backlog being cleared quickly and people receiving their due payments before Christmas. I seek assurance from the Minister on this matter and urge that every effort be made to ensure people are not deprived at this time.
Treatment benefits cover financial assistance for dental and optical treatment and medical appliances. People are out of pocket and are being deprived of their just entitlements. The staff at Letterkenny, represented by the Civil and Public Services Union, have genuine grievances which must be resolved. These chiefly concern the levels of staffing and grading at the office in the context of a new computerised system. The union commenced its action at the beginning of October, a satisfactory agreement with management not having been reached. The initial action continued for four weeks and when no progress was made, it was escalated.
I understand from the CPSU that initially the Department was not offering any promotions to staff officer grade and has now offered four. This would still leave the ratio of staff officers to clerical officers in Letterkenny far below the ratio in the Department generally which is one to five. The union believes that these promotions are necessary in the context of the introduction of the new computerised system.
It is clear that the Department's failure to establish a partnership committee at Letterkenny is central to the industrial relations problems there. There is a clear obligation on management, under successive partnership agreements, to establish such a committee. It is unacceptable that such a dispute should have been allowed to develop and fester in such a key Department. The widespread effects of the dispute have been highlighted by the Dóchas for Women organisation in my home county of Monaghan. The organisation works with women on a daily basis, a number of whom have been deprived of payments due to them. Some mothers of babies born up to four months ago still have not received payments.
I call on the Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs to ensure that the staffing and grading issues at the heart of the dispute are resolved immediately and that the necessary partnership committee is established at the Letterkenny office. The Minister has a special responsibility, I contend, to ensure families are not left seriously out of pocket in the approach to Christmas. Go raibh maith agat.