Social Welfare System Meltdown!!!

Morgana1988

Yesterday my partner was meant to receive his back to education allowance, as it is supposed to be transferred to him every Thursday. For the past 2 weeks there was no problem, but yesterday we got the fright of our lives when there was no sign of the money. I went to our local social welfare office and was told that "the system is down", they didn't give any other explanations just that they would ring us when they got it sorted. When my partner was back from college we both went down again. Same story, We were told that there was a chance that the main office in Newbridge might have cancelled his pay, without warning! We went home again slightly terrified, we depend on that money to eat. The main office in Newbridge won't answer the phone, and the Social Welfare Dept. website is unavailable. Still no sign of anything in his account either, and no call from the people in the local office with any information at all. This is so frightening! Has anyone else been experiencing these problems??!!

artanevilla

Moved from IT Carlow.

mrsbyrne

Welfare website is fine now.
You need to contact your local CWO immediately as it is now Friday afternoon and you wont get any help after 4pm.
http://www.welfare.ie/en/Pages/otheroffice/community-welfare-office-contact.aspx

wmpdd3

We had this the week before last, BTEA too, it came in the next week.

Whiplashy

They seem to be having major system meltdowns at the moment. They cut me off two weeks ago without any notice. When I contacted them about my missing payments they said they had a backlog of stuff to be put into the computer which is why I got cut off. I don't know how they have the neck to be cutting people off when they know the problems are at there end! Still no money for me either.

Morgana1988

Gosh that's awful Whiplashy sorry to hear that You're right I mean people are really in bother these days or else we wouldn't be going to the Social Welfare looking for help! I have literally been down to the last 3 cents in my wallet plenty of times it's so hard! I wonder why they are having system failures and backlogs? Well, I know that in my local office the staff only work for 5 and a half hours a day. Maybe if they took a lunch break of 1 hour instead of 2, and stayed in the office until 5 or 6 instead of bailing out at 4pm! I have a part time job and when I'm in work it's an 8 and a half hour day, often with no break. They have it pretty handy. If they worked a little bit more, maybe they could clear the backlog?! The interesting thing is RTE news didn't mention a thing about it, which I feel is pretty insulting, clearly they do not care that people depend on that allowance to eat! And all because of a screwed up system, that is not of our creation, but that we now have to struggle with every day :mad: Anyhoo! Rant over! Thanks all for replying to my post was having a very dramatic "Whhyyyyyyyy???!!!" moment Nice to hear that I'm not the only one experiencing these nasty thangs!

pedrodrogheda

Morgana, must be a wonderful old job they have in Newbridge if they all only work 5 1/2 hours a day? That makes a total of 27 and a half hours a week. Even if they all did only work that little, which I very much doubt, please bear in mind that they would only get paid for those hours. The working week in Social Protection is 37 hours per week. Any work pattern less than this is pro rata. It is extremely unfair of you to generalise in this way. I wish people would stop bashing on civil servants especially front line ones. You say that it is pretty insulting that RTE didn't mention the system breakdown. I find it very insulting that you wrote 'They have it pretty handy. If they worked a little bit more, maybe they could clear the backlog?! The interesting thing is RTE news didn't mention a thing about it, which I feel is pretty insulting, clearly they do not care that people depend on that allowance to eat!' I have friends who do work in welfare and they are stressed out of their heads, they too have bills to pay and have no money left over at the end of the week, and many of the people working in SW are in fact on lone parents or FIS or both. Please bear in mind that you are just one person out of the nearly half a million that SW have to deal with on a daily basis, and sometimes things do go wrong. When the systems went down my 2 friends that work in SW were in a terrible state; taking dog's abuse from customers who couldn't see past the 'face' at the counter. The systems that are provided by the Government are the only systems public and civil servants have to work with. If the system crashes it is not the workers fault. And no, I am neither a civil or a public servant, just glad that we have such dedicated front line staff in Social Protection and the HSE who have to deal with the most difficult and sometimes terrifying situations on a daily basis while the thanks they get is paycuts and abuse from people like you.

Rainbow Kitty

pedrodrogheda wrote: »

Morgana, must be a wonderful old job they have in Newbridge if they all only work 5 1/2 hours a day? That makes a total of 27 and a half hours a week. Even if they all did only work that little, which I very much doubt, please bear in mind that they would only get paid for those hours. The working week in Social Protection is 37 hours per week. Any work pattern less than this is pro rata. It is extremely unfair of you to generalise in this way. I wish people would stop bashing on civil servants especially front line ones. You say that it is pretty insulting that RTE didn't mention the system breakdown. I find it very insulting that you wrote 'They have it pretty handy. If they worked a little bit more, maybe they could clear the backlog?! The interesting thing is RTE news didn't mention a thing about it, which I feel is pretty insulting, clearly they do not care that people depend on that allowance to eat!' I have friends who do work in welfare and they are stressed out of their heads, they too have bills to pay and have no money left over at the end of the week, and many of the people working in SW are in fact on lone parents or FIS or both. Please bear in mind that you are just one person out of the nearly half a million that SW have to deal with on a daily basis, and sometimes things do go wrong. When the systems went down my 2 friends that work in SW were in a terrible state; taking dog's abuse from customers who couldn't see past the 'face' at the counter. The systems that are provided by the Government are the only systems public and civil servants have to work with. If the system crashes it is not the workers fault. And no, I am neither a civil or a public servant, just glad that we have such dedicated front line staff in Social Protection and the HSE who have to deal with the most difficult and sometimes terrifying situations on a daily basis while the thanks they get is paycuts and abuse from people like you.

+1 to this comment and also just because the office closes to the public it doesn't mean the staff walk out the door at 4pm. I also have a friend working in the DSP and she is lucky to be out by 6 most days as there is a mountain of paperwork to be done after all the clients have gone at 4.