Michael O’Connor, community welfare officer
ONCE MICHAEL O’Connor’s job was to source emergency welfare payments for the vulnerable and help them get their lives back on track.
These days, it feels like the welfare system itself is in need of emergency support.
“We’re the lifeboat which rescues people, but we’ve taken as many as we can on board and now it’s beginning to sink,” says O’Connor, who is based in north Co Kildare.
“I’ve jettisoned whatever extra work I can to ensure people’s basic claims are processed as fast as possible, but that’s getting harder and harder. We’re buckling under the strain.”
At the welfare office in Newbridge, the numbers have doubled over the past year or so. Recently, he says, crowds at the office were so large that officials had to close it for a time on health and safety grounds.
Community welfare officers have long considered themselves the more humane face of the welfare system: they can offer discretionary payments, give more time to welfare claimants and make home visits.
Now, they say, that’s all beginning to change. O’Connor, for example, used to deal with about 65 claimants in need of emergency support a week. Last week, that number was in excess of 200.
“Increasingly, the service is becoming paralysed by doing stuff like form-filling . . . people deserve better and we shouldn’t just be duplicating the work of welfare offices,” says O’Connor, who is speaking in his capacity as a Siptu member.
The type of emergency support being sought is many and varied, he says. But the big difference between now and the 1980s is the level of debt. “Back then, if someone missed a few mortgage payments, that might have been a few hundred pounds owed. Now, mortgage [payments] of €1,500 or €1,600 are common. If you miss a few of those, it’s very hard to climb out of that.”
As welfare officers wait and hope for more resources, O’Connor says he will continue to help people as best he can.
“It’s sad and frustrating for us . . . But I’ll do this until I die. You have to make sure people get what they’re entitled to.”