asked the Minister for Social Welfare in view of the evidence to the former Dáil Committee on Public Expenditure, where Department officials made reference to a computer link up between a health board and his Department and a pilot scheme involving the South-Eastern Health Board and the Department of Social Welfare, if he will outline the results which have emerged to date; and if it is intended that the link-ups will be extended.
Written Answers. - Computer Link-up.
51.
The supplementary welfare allowance scheme is administered on behalf of the Department of Social Welfare by community welfare officers, who are employees of the health boards. Computer links, where they have been established, are used to facilitate community welfare officers who need to verify the situation where an applicant may also be a claimant for other social welfare payments. This information is sometimes necessary to enable a decision to be made on entitlement to supplementary welfare allowance. Access to the information in this way, enables decisions on payments to be made much more quickly than heretofore and the results to date show a considerable improvement in the quality of service to the public. In effect it replaces and speeds up the inquiries which normally have to be made by writing or on the telephone.
The computer links were first provided to the South-Eastern Health Board in 1986 and have now been extended to four additional health boards. It is envisaged that some community welfare officers in each of the remaining health boards will have this facility by the end of this year but this will depend to some extent on the rate of progress on computerisation and telecommunciations networks both within the Department and the health boards.