Irish Water call centre to get 300k calls on grants

The Coalition is preparing to be swamped with hundreds of thousands of queries and problems over administering water charge assistance grants for households this year.

Plans are in place for a special centre to deal with 300,000 calls over six weeks from people experiencing problems filling in forms to get water grants paid into their accounts or by cheque.

The private company will collect PPS numbers and bank account details from people unable to fill in their grant applications online.

The Irish Examiner has also learned the call centre could be kept open for three years — up until 2018 when metered charging will begin in homes.

Tánaiste Joan Burton’s Department of Social Protection expects the centre to face huge volumes of calls, including complaints and problems keeping people on hold.

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The centre could receive 7,000 calls a day and will need to be manned by hundreds of workers. It will operate separately from Irish Water’s own centre, which already gets large volumes of calls.

The Government has agreed to gift the annual €100 grant to households which will leave single-adult homes paying €60 and multi-adult homes €160 for water.

Households must register a second time beyond signing up with Irish Water for a different scheme to draw down the special assistance payment.

A Department of Social Protection tender says the centre’s services are to support the online application process for the grant and the payment process.

The centre will operate as a point of contact for households querying how they get the grant. It will also co-ordinate with the Department of Social Protection and Irish Water in completing “complex” applications and arranging payments through bank accounts or by cheque.

Customers applying for grants online will first enter reference numbers assigned by Irish Water, confirm their personal details, and then provide their PPS numbers and bank account details.

They will also be given a separate unique reference number to contact the call centre. But those having problems completing the online form will instead give call centre workers their PPS numbers and personal bank account details.

The new centre will also have to cope with complaints, problems keeping callers on hold, and possible investigations over data breaches, it is warned.

The department says it may extend the centre’s contract possibly up until 2018, when the Coalition has said that real-time metering for water costs will begin.

Homes will begin getting letters about grants from mid August. The call centre will operate from then up until October 16, when grant payments will have finished. The Coalition say households who have not signed up for water charges by the end of June will be barred from getting the grant.

The tender says 300,000 people are expected to contact the call centre over a 40 to 45 day period, meaning it may get as many as 7,500 callers a day.

Anti-water charge TD Paul Murphy said yesterday people would be annoyed a private company was handling PPS numbers. He also said: “This conservation grant, they don’t have a plan for it. It’s just there as a carrot trying to get people on board to sign up for Irish Water so they say they have the registration figures and to try and encourage people to pay.”

Launching the #wewontpay counter-offensive to Irish Water bills this morning. Registered or not, unite and boycott! pic.twitter.com/FcOO5IzNFe

— Paul Murphy 🇵🇸 (@paulmurphy_TD) April 9, 2015

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