Minister for Social & Family Affairs Mary Hanafin has said staff in welfare offices around the country are working flat out to deal with jobseeker payments for people who have been made redundant.
Ms Hanafin says staff have been put under extreme pressure by the increased numbers signing on the Live Register.
The minister says it took an average of two weeks to process new benefit claims and five weeks to deal with jobseekers' allowance applications in December.
115 additional staff were allocated to handle the surge in claims at the end of last year and the minister says the situation is under constant review.
Figures released today by the Department of Social & Family Affairs show that some applicants for the means tested Jobseeker's Allowance had to wait over 11 weeks to get their claims processed, depending on the welfare office they were attending.
Fine Gael claims the Government has failed to prepare for the increase in the numbers out of work and that available staff are not being allocated to effectively deal with the workload in different parts of the country.
