asked the Minister for Social Welfare if she is aware that unemployed persons in Rathcoole, County Dublin, under present departmental arrangements must sign on in Clondalkin, County Dublin and collect benefit in Clondalkin, County Dublin, on two separate days and that the bus fare involved in these journeys from Clondalkin to Rathcoole amounts to £3.40 per week; whether she will alter this completely unsatisfactory situation which requires such a major expense; and if she will make a statement indicating proposals to meet the needs of this situation.
Written Answers. - Signing on Arrangements.
129.
The current signing arrangements are governed by statutory regulations which provide that claimants to unemployment assistance or unemployment benefit must sign the unemployed register to indicate that they are available for and genuinely seeking work. Persons who reside within six miles of a local office of the Department are required to present themselves there to sign the register at least once weekly to prove unemployment. Claimants who reside over six miles from the local office register as unemployed at their local Garda station and they are paid at their local post office on foot of a voucher sent to them by their local office.
Up to recently unemployed persons residing in the Rathcoole area were required to attend at their local Garda station to have their declarations of unemployment certified and they were paid at their local post office. However, since a new employment exchange was opened at Clondalkin on 4 November 1986, claimants in the Rathcoole area, which is within six miles of Clondalkin, are required to attend once weekly at the exchange to sign the unemployed register and they continue to be paid at their local post office in Rathcoole. No claimant is required to attend at the exchange more than once weekly. Those arrangements are not considered onerous and are in fact designed to keep any travelling expenses of claimants to a minimum. If the Deputy has evidence regarding a particular case or cases perhaps he would furnish the revelant details so that the matter could be further investigated.