Derek Nolan (Galway West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will raise an issue that has arisen in the course of the meeting. The Department has undergone a radical change in recent years and, from personal experience, I believe it has dealt with much of it well. Community welfare officers have, in effect, become Intreo officers and taken over responsibility for community employment schemes. As such, they have acquired substantial functions in the area of job activation over and above making payments and doing administration. Speaking to some staff in the service, it appears that much of this change has come about extremely quickly and caused a major shock. The level of structural change in the past three or four years has been immense. How are staff coping with these dramatic changes? Is the process of assuming many additional functions working well? Has this organisational change been managed and coped with to the best possible degree?