Eastern Health Board welfare managers were rebuked in February for challenging a Government decision on the entitlements of asylum-seekers. The rebuke came shortly after a senior Department of Justice official complained that social welfare officials were undermining Government policy on asylum-seekers.
Community welfare officers have been angered by an instruction that, with some exceptions, asylum-seekers given full board and lodging around the State should be denied rent allowances if they tried to leave.
Some asylum-seekers prefer to go to Dublin and get normal welfare payments and a rent allowance. In January, Ms Berenice O'Neill, who is in charge of the "dispersal" policy of the Department of Justice, complained to the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs that asylum-seekers were leaving their full board accommodation and getting rent allowances in Dublin.
She said, according to a note of a meeting released under the Freedom of Information Act, that unless the DSCFA acted to prevent rent allowances being granted in such cases, she would tell her Minister that community welfare officers and the Department were undermining the direct provision programme.
However, superintendent community welfare officers continued to be critical of Government policy and met in Dublin. The view was expressed that the Government should legislate if it wanted to change the rules, instead of "manipulating" the supplementary welfare scheme.
This stance led to a stern letter from EHB programme manager Mr Michael Walsh to a senior official in the community welfare service.
He wrote: "It would be quite inappropriate for our board or a service within our board to disregard Government policy. I am concerned that your staff would have taken such a decision." He ordered that each superintendent be contacted and told to implement policy.
Community welfare officers are seeking a meeting with departmental officials through their union, Impact.