Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 9 February 2023
5. Deputy Paul Murphy asked the Minister for Social Protection the steps she is taking to ensure that community welfare officers are readily accessible to all who need them, and that additional needs’ payments are processed promptly; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [6337/23]
View answerQuestion No. 5, in the name of Deputy Paul Murphy, will be taken by Deputy Boyd Barrett.
As the Minister knows, huge numbers of families are being hammered with the cost of living, energy costs, food prices and so on, and the centrepiece of the Government's response to that has involved telling people to get exceptional needs payments. Pre-Covid, if you needed something like that, you would have a face-to-face meeting with a community welfare officer, CWO, whereas that is no longer the case. As a result, people desperately in need of support have nobody to talk to, and that needs to be remedied. It is a criticism not of any of the staff but rather of the lack of staffing and the lack of front-line personnel to deal with vulnerable and desperate people.
Community welfare officers are physically on site daily in more than 50 Intreo centres, where they are available to be seen without an appointment during business hours Monday to Friday. In addition to meeting citizens in the Intreo centres, branch offices and Department of Social Protection offices, community welfare officers can facilitate an appointment within a short time after someone requires such a meeting at an agreed location, including a person's home.
Staffing levels have been maintained in the community welfare service nationwide in recent years, even during times when demands on the service decreased. This reflects my commitment to continuing to support the delivery of locally based services to clients. Currently, 412 people across all grades are working in the community welfare service, including 323 community welfare officers.
Due to the increased number of applications received, agreement was reached with the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform for approximately 74 additional staff for the community welfare service. These staff will be at all grades and will increase the capacity of community welfare officers to focus on making decisions relating to complex applications and meeting clients locally as required. Recruitment has commenced and I expect the additional staff will be in place during quarter 1 this year. In the meantime, the Department has assigned an additional 30 staff to the service.
There are no backlogs of additional needs payment applications at present and work on hand is within the scheme's normal processing levels. Complete applications are finalised within two weeks and there is currently less than two weeks' work on hand. Where it is clear a person has an immediate need, every effort is made to ensure he or she will receive a payment on the same day. Approximately 10% of community welfare service payments to customers are made on this basis.
We ran an extensive advertising campaign to make people aware this is the safety net to be used whenever help is needed. A lot of applications have come in and I am glad because that is what we want to see. We processed 97,000 applicants in 2022 alone and we have put more resources into the service. We are committed to providing this service, which is so necessary.
I will give the Minister some examples, the first of which involves a couple in their 60s. The husband, who used to work, developed early-onset Alzheimer's disease. They were on a big top-up arrangement, which people on the housing assistance payment, HAP, should not have to pay, and as a result they fell into arrears, given the cost-of-living hikes. We eventually got an exceptional needs payment for them but it was not enough because at no point could they meet an individual to explain the complexities of their case. The Minister said unscheduled meetings with CWOs are available, but I am afraid that is not true. I tabled a question about the hotline that can be called, which she will come to later in this session. If you call that hotline, you will encounter very nice people at the other end of the phone but they are not community welfare officers. They are people who will send you out forms to be filled out. There have been a number of cases of desperate people who did not get their exceptional needs payments until after Christmas, so had very little money, and they would not have got them without the assistance of my office.
I can give another example of a man whose wife has cancer. He cannot turn down the heating but, because she is on illness benefit, he is not entitled to the fuel allowance or the additional needs payment. These are difficult, complex circumstances for vulnerable people and they need to be explained to a human being. That is not a criticism of the staff. It is a criticism that there has been a change in the availability of human beings to talk to in the community welfare service.
If the Deputy wants to give me those details, I will follow up on them and find exactly what the case was. There have been other incidents where people have come forward with details, and when I looked them up, I discovered they were somewhat different from what was initially anticipated. While I fully accept the bona fides of the cases the Deputy raised, I would like to look into them to see exactly what happened because we have put every effort into reducing the length of time within which a decision is made.
Community welfare officers are available to meet people. They can do so by appointment and there is no problem in doing that. If members of the public visit an Intreo office, they can meet the officers face to face. We have increased the number of staff in the offices and, as I said, we processed 97,000 payments last year. That is a lot of processing. There is no backlog and we are down to two weeks. While some cases will take slightly longer, that is most likely because applicants have not got all the information they need. Each case is individual. As I said, I will be happy to look at the two specific cases the Deputy brought to my attention.
If I can help progress those cases, I will certainly send them to the Minister. My point is that many of the cases of desperate people are complicated. The case of somebody who has fallen into arrears on his rent because he is paying a HAP top-up, that is, someone whose wife has Alzheimer's disease, who used to work and whose HAP tenancy is based on an income he no longer has, is complicated. It is very difficult to explain on a form or a phone call. You need to be sitting with an individual to explain those complexities. The same is true of a person who is receiving long-term illness benefit when, arguably, he should be on a different payment, and so on. These are complicated cases.
The Minister suggested it is easy to get a face-to-face meeting with a community welfare officer, but that is not the experience we are getting. Sometimes it is not possible even to get one at all.
I do want to acknowledge that, when our office gets on to divisional management, it can be very helpful, but without our assistance, many of those people would not have got payments at all. There is something wrong with staffing levels that we cannot have the availability of more face-to-face community welfare officers who are easily accessible.
We have increased the number of staff. There is a full-time community welfare officer present in more than 50 Intreo offices nationwide, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday to Friday. I accept there can be some very complex cases but the majority, 80% of cases, are processed in a short time. That is an indication of the service we are providing. There may be some complex cases. I am happy to look at the two specific cases the Deputy mentioned to me. We can discuss them later and I will get the details. Much of the evidence I am getting is anecdotal and I need to see the specific cases. If people have cases they want to bring to my attention, I am happy to look them up and find out exactly what happened because I want to make sure people get the service. We have an increased number of applications and approximately 74 staff to be assigned to the community welfare service. Recruitment has commenced. In most cases, they receive their payment within two weeks provided they have all the information they need. That is a big improvement on where it was.
