Eoghan Kenny Probes €455k Temporary Branch Contracts

I want to welcome all the witnesses as well and thank all of the staff in the Social Protection Department for everything they are doing for liaising with our constituency, our offices and with members of the public across the country. Do you have a social welfare branch? How many social welfare branches across the country do you have? We have, and I'll ask three, but we have about 120 and they're split between our own offices and branch offices. Sorry, Deputy. Yes, the SG is correct. We have 60 departmental offices and we have 60 branch offices. Now, they've been there, again, a bit like the Twismas bonus, when Adam was a little boy, they've been there and they're actually contracted to do a lot of the work that the actual departmental offices do in relation to payments, cost per service and that. So it's 120 offices throughout the country. Very good. OK. In 2024, there were two temporary contracts for branch managers in the Middleton and Ross Cray branches, totaling 455,231. The timelines on those temporary contracts are extremely vague. What was the timeline on both of those? Yeah, I'll come back to you with the exact timeline. What generally happens in those instances, as Theresa said, the branch offices are, they've been there since before the foundation of the state. The way they're set up, they're indefinite contracts, lifetime contracts, a bit like sub-post offices, and they go from family to family. What sometimes happens is a family member ages out and doesn't want to do it anymore. Did that happen in both of these cases? I think that was the case in both of them. The family members didn't want to take over, so then we've got to go and publish a notice. And I think it was, Theresa, in that case, it was... I think we've probably given a short-term contract for about three years, temporarily. And we usually, some of them, in actual cases, we would actually revert and put in the departmental offices, like up in Monaghan, we put in the departmental office. In Middleton and in Roscray, you gave two temporary contracts. For how long? I honestly would have to come back with that, the more than the Secretary, I don't actually have that. Have you an estimation on that? Possibility, I would imagine it's probably about three years, but I would have to check that. Now, just to go back to what the Secretary says, some people have lifelong contracts, but in later years, we've been actually putting shorter periods on the contracts in relation to what different renewable contracts, because there's some locations where it may be appropriate to put in a departmental offices to one of those locations... This wasn't the case in Middleton and Roscray, was it? Not at the minute, anyway. No. The fact that they're still... They're not temporary anymore. So we have found somebody to run those offices? Yeah, temporarily, yeah. Okay. So we have to clarify, definitely, that the longest will be... Generally speaking, you're looking at less than a year, because what we need to do is get somebody to take it on, pending a... Generally speaking, less than a year for a temporary contract. Is it a possibility so that Middleton and Roscray were less than a year? It is. We need to come back with the data, Deputy. I'll just get the exact data for you, but... You'll come back in writing? In writing. You have it there now, no? I don't have it now, I don't think, but I'll send a note to the committee. It's important, Deputy, just to put in context. They're important offices for us. Oh, yeah, absolutely. So quite often, we get very short notice. The person who's running it could be quite... I suppose... And they tell us, I'm not opening next week. I'm outlining this. Like, I understand how important they are to communities. I have one in my own community in Mallow, and I understand how important they are. But the significant issue is the timeline on those temporary contracts is extremely vague, and the department, the taxpayer, spent €455,000 on these temporary contracts. So it's imperative, and it's actually quite disappointing, that in such an expenditure to the taxpayer of €455,000, that you don't have the timelines on the boat of these branches. Was there any other... But I'll give you just a bit of comfort about the spending. The payments are set at standard rates for all branch offices, related to the number of transactions and the number of clients they share. So how much would a branch officer be on? It varies depending on the size of the office. So some would be very small amounts. Maynooth would be our biggest branch office, which would be over a million. But the branch managers remuneration in total in 2024, and this is for about 60 offices, was 15 million. 15 million. For 60 offices for... 60 offices. So that's 60 branch managers. Yeah. Okay. And do they vary, or are they specific for each branch manager? The rates are the same for all of them. So there's a payment related to the claim load and related to transactions. Okay. And it's a standard rate. So whoever got the temporary contract in Mitchellstown wasn't getting a special deal or special money and a payment. It is what we would have spent anyway. The procurement of those temporary contracts, like you said, they're such a short space of time. How do you get those? Do you advertise it? Do you... We advertise them, yes. And do you advertise it as a temporary contract? And we would advertise the permanent one in local media. So for the replacement, it would be advertised locally. We're looking for a new branch manager from Mitchellstown. In the case, and I can't comment specifically on Mitchellstown, but other ones that I'd be familiar with, where you sometimes get very short notice. Because these contracts are going back to before 2022. Yeah. And you'll get somebody, and I'm not exaggerating when I say definitely somebody who's turned 80, who says, I'm not opening next week. Yeah. I understand. And we've got to go and find somebody in the community, maybe a shop owner in the community, and say, listen, will you run it for a while while we run the... Yeah, no, I understand. And that's what happens. You can't close the office. Well, I just think, so it's important that you'd come back, like, as quickly as possible with that timeline, because it's, we need to assess how, you know, how long did we, were we paying the $450,000, $455,000. So in relation, how confident are you as Secretary General of the Department that we'll abolish carers allowance in this program for, in this period of government? Well, it's a matter for, I suppose, the Minister, really, and the government to answer that. Do you believe the Social Protection Department are able to cover that cost? Well, it's up to the government to decide whether it's available. Obviously, we cover 28% of expenditure, but the government can raise taxes, it can put expenditure elsewhere, economic growth, it can fund it. There's been a very significant increase in the carers allowance disregards over the last number of years. They've more than doubled. And I think that is evident. And again, I don't get into politics, definitely, but I'd say the evidence is that the government is doing what it said it was going to do, which is abolish it over the course of this government. The increase from €625, from €200 to over €625, to €2,000, it's now €2,000 per a couple, is a very significant increase. It's also, like tongue-in-cheek, it's also quite a significant amount of money that carers save this country as well. So I just want to put that on the record as well. Well, I don't cast that in any detail, Carl. No, no, and I don't expect you to, but I want to put that on the record. In relation to administration, non-scheme expenditure, it totals €627 million for 2024, up from €600 million in 2023. There was €107.1 million spent on digital capital investment and IT. What was that €107 million spent on in one year? Well, definitely we have, and I could get you a breakdown in detail, but we have probably the largest IT organisation of any business or any company in the state. We make nearly €100 million payments a year. We process €5 million claims. Do you know how much we spent in 2023, 2024? Oh, we have all that information, definitely we can get it to you. But what we've done is we've invested very heavily in our online services, and most of our claims are now received online. Yeah, no, like I just... And that does take investment. I just want to know, has there been a significant increase since 2023 to 2024? Like €107 million seems quite excessive. I'm not sure if you have the details in front of you, controller or not, or general in relation to financial accounts in 2023. You mightn't. But I think the actual figure for IT spend in 2024 is €73 million. So what does a part of that expenditure... It's actually outlined here, administration, non-scheme expenditure. Digital capital investment and IT, €107.1 million. Yeah, the capital amount is €73 million, definitely, just to clear it on. The balance would be staff costs. We have about 250 staff in our IT department. So is that an increase in 2023? Oh, it would be. Every year we're increasing, Deputy. And the nature of IT expend is... Was there any specific IT projects that began within the department in 2024? Oh, yes, sorry, Deputy. For example, the pay-related benefit system, the new job secret pay-related benefit had to be built from scratch. How much did that cost? That was treason might have the answer to that, but I'll come back to that in a moment, Deputy. We went from an old IT system, which was developed in the 1990s, which was called ISTIS, which was developed in the 1990s, which did nearly all our short-term schemes. I suppose I only have a minute left, so I just want to know. Two and a half million is the answer to the question on the job secret pay-related benefit. It cost two and a half million. Two and a half million. How was that procured? Was there a contract? An open tender, yeah. An open tender? On our IT, Deputy, we manage all our IT projects ourselves, so we go to tender, and what we go to tender for is we want... When did you go to tender on that? That would have been 2023. 2022? Yeah, 2023. And when was the successful tender approved? It would have been in that year, 2022, 2023. This is a project which took about 18 months. It began in 2024. We started a project in 2023, Deputy. It started officially in 2024, then. And the payment started. You don't build a job secret pay-related benefit system in three months. It takes a year and a half. I suppose on that issue as well, to do something like job seekers, as the Secretary says, it was a legacy system, which looks after 18 schemes of the department, right? It supports 18 payment schemes. The job seekers, loan payments, community welfare payments, all of those are supported on it. And actually to assess how you would transfer them from one platform to another, there's quite a bit of time went into that part of the project before we ever started. I just have one more question in relation to how many community welfare officers in the country do you have? Community welfare services staff, Deputy, is... I'll get to the number now. And has their job specification changed? The job specification hasn't changed. There's 532 community welfare staff, Deputy. Why are they no longer meeting people, Deputy? They are meeting people, Deputy. No. They are, Deputy. They're not. I have to challenge you on that one. We have permanent community welfare officers located in 51 locations. It was previously the case, say, in the Mallow branch. It was previously the case that a member of the public could enter the branch and meet the community welfare officer. That's no longer the case. I'll explain how it operates now, Deputy. We have 532 staff in the community welfare service. They're permanently located in 51 locations around the country, a walk-in service, 9 to 5. We also have 20 satellite officers, so that's 71 locations. In places like Mallow, for example, before, you could walk in to meet the community welfare officer at certain times of the day and certain days of the week, but they weren't there fully permanently. What we've gone to is a model where there's 51 locations where they're permanently available. So people know. So Mallow is obviously that one of those locations. I can't say whether Mallow is one or not, Deputy, off the top of the head, but we'll tell you now. Can I bring it back? But 30%, just to give you the 30% of our community welfare service claims now come in online. About 30% come in over the phone, and about 30% are in person. And we make about 30% of our payments on the day in person. And actually, we did make changes in the past. When we took on the community welfare service, just to give you some idea of the scale, there were about 100,000 people getting rent supplement. Community welfare service was also processing medical card services. Both of those have gone. So the community welfare service, in terms of the scale of its operations, is now about a third of what it was when we took it over from the HSE. Because the HSE have set up their own medical card processing, rent supplements, turned to the hat, which is done by the local authorities. That automatically means you've got a situation where you previously had maybe 100 locations where CWO was. It creates a difficulty, because if you have a CWO who's going to be two hours, for example, in Drumlish an area I don't know well. I'm going to be in the past. I'd be two hours in Drumlish on a Tuesday morning. And on a Wednesday afternoon, I'll be in Ballymahan. The people have to, they have one day a week to get to them. Now they can go into Longport Town every day of the week. And that's a better service. I wish you all well. Thank you. And a happy Christmas.