Poverty agency to lose 40% of staff, committee told

JOINT COMMITTEE ON SOCIAL AND FAMILY AFFAIRS:THE COMBAT Poverty Agency is to lose 40 per cent of its staff as part of its integration into the Department of Social and Family Affairs, an Oireachtas Committee heard yesterday.

The revelation was described as “very concerning” by Róisín Shortall TD, of the Labour Party, one of the members of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Social and Family Affairs.

She and other members of the committee were highly critical of the manner in which their questions were answered by director of the Office of Social Inclusion (OSI) Gerry Mangan. His answers were described as “unsatisfactory”, “inadequate” and “frustrating”.

The committee heard from senior members of the OSI, the section in the department into which the Combat Poverty Agency (CPA) is being subsumed on progress in the integration. The Government announced its intentions to amalgamate the agency into the department in last year’s budget.

Catherine Hazlet, principal of the OSI, said there had been 25 posts in the agency. Four of these were temporary contracts which expired, four staff were redeployed elsewhere in the department and 2.5 vacancies have not been filled. In all 10 were lost.

“That’s a very substantial loss of expertise,” said Ms Shortall. “The critical point is that 40 per cent of the Combat Poverty staff are gone.” The two most senior staff members of the OSI, Ms Hazlet and director Gerry Mangan, were department officials. She asked what were the qualifications of the CPA staff, to which Mr Mangan asked if she wanted to know the qualifications of everyone in the Civil Service.

He said the posts in the new OSI were not specialist posts. “They are Civil Servant posts.”

Ms Shortall said: “I object to the tone of the answers we are getting here. “We have been here at least 30 minutes since Mr Mangan came in to answer questions and we have got long rambling responses that don’t address the issues. It is not an adequate way to respond to this committee and it doesn’t augur well for the responsiveness of his division.”

Senator Nicky McFadden, of Fine Gael, said Ireland was performing very badly in addressing poverty. “I really question what your role is now because you’ve lost your independence. We need to find ways to stop people going hungry and keeping them warm this winter. We are sitting around in comfort talking about indicators and I just get frustrated.”

She said she wanted to see “urgent, urgent measures” being taken.

Mr Mangan apologised for not answering the questions in the way the members wanted and said he found the session helpful “because it makes us aware of your concerns and the level of accountability this committee expects us to provide”.