PEOPLE WHO have lost their jobs are queuing for nearly two hours outside social welfare offices before they open in the morning, a trade union conference was told yesterday.
The annual conference of the Public Service Executive Union (PSEU) in Killarney yesterday strongly criticised the Department of Social and Family Affairs for failing to provide adequate staffing numbers and accommodation to deal with the dramatic rise in the Live Register over recent months.
It said that this was causing long delays for customers in accessing unemployment support schemes. The union, which represents mainly mid-ranking civil servants, also maintained that over the past year staff working in social welfare local offices had seen their workload increase by 80 per cent.
On Thursday, the general secretary of Impact and the chairman of the State’s training agency Fás, forecast at the conference that unemployment levels could reach 580,000 by the end of the year on current trends.
Tony O’Brien of the Department of Social and Family Affairs in Limerick said that in large numbers of local offices around the country queues begin forming from 7.45 in the morning, even though the doors do not open until 9.30.
“When the doors are open the offices are so congested that you can’t even tell who is in what queue. Most of these offices are managed by higher executive officers, so it is up to them organise some form of crowd control,” he said.
Mr O’Brien said that the last staff review for local offices was carried out in September 2008 at a time when the Live Register stood at 240,000 people.
He said that in March the numbers on the Live Register had risen to 371,000 – an increase of 55 per cent.
Mr O’Brien added that no extra staff has been provided to deal with this increase, although he read to the conference a press release issued by the Department of Social and Family Affairs which stated that the Government had approved an additional 115 posts to assist the busiest offices.
Mr O’Brien said that the human cost of this situation was that there were tens of thousands of social welfare customers awaiting decisions on their applications at the moment.
“In my office there are 3,500 applicants waiting for a decision,” he said.
Mr O’Brien said another press release issued by the department last December had stated that job-seeker applicants were being dealt with speedily. He said this was “completely contradicted by the inaction of the department in providing additional staff”.
“Staff are now at the stage where they are under constant stress and pressure in trying to deal with an insurmountable volume of work with very little support from the department,” he said.