Vol. 553 No. 5
394 Mr. Ring asked the Minister for Social and Family Affairs if the dispute in the child benefit section of her Department has been fully resolved; and the reason this section is not answering phone calls from the general public. [14573/02]
The industrial dispute in child benefit section was resolved on 21 January 2002 and nor mal working resumed at that stage. A significant backlog of work arose during the dispute and efforts to deal with it and to restore normal service to child benefit customers were being seriously hampered by the volume of telephone calls which were being received after the dispute. It was not possible to handle the increased volume of telephone calls without diverting staff from claim processing and making the arrears situation worse. In order to provide the best service to our customers arrangements were made to concentrate as much effort as possible on dealing with the claims and to provide information through recorded messages which would satisfy the needs of many telephone callers and act as a filter which would allow those experiencing hardship or otherwise in need of urgent payment to have their calls dealt with. The backlog is reducing due to these measures. Normal telephone service will be resumed in the next few weeks.
