Representatives of the State's 600 community welfare officers will express their "fury" at social welfare cuts announced in the estimates, at a meeting between trade union representatives and Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs officials on Thursday.
CWOs will have to implement the cuts in supplementary welfare allowances such as rent supplement, dietary allowance and creche payments. They make the decisions on whether applicants are eligible.
"We will be telling the Department that the cuts are inhumane, nasty and inoperable," Mr Pat Bolger, vice chair of IMPACT's CWO national group, told The Irish Times, yesterday.
Senior members of the two unions representing CWOs - SIPTU and IMPACT - will attend the quarterly meeting with Department officials.
Mr Bolger said CWOs would "absolutely resist" the cuts. In particular, he said, the cuts in rent supplement allowance would be "impossible to implement".
As part of her Department's programme to save €58 million, the Minister, Ms Coughlan, said applicants for rent allowance would have to be renting for six months before being considered eligible.
"This SWA supplementary welfare allowance is a basic, integral payment to thousands of people. If this cut goes ahead people are going to become homeless as a result," said Mr Bolger.
Meanwhile yesterday, some 13 organisations representing the voluntary and community sector came together to call on the Government to reverse the cuts on rent allowance.
Ms Noeleen Hartigan, of the Simon communities of Ireland, said the measure flew in the face of Government commitments to prevent homelessness. Other organisations opposing the rent cut include Threshold, Focus Ireland, the Society of St Vincent de Paul and the INOU.
