LET’S HOPE the general run of Government agencies dealing with the public do not follow the example of the Private Residential Tenancy Board when their budgets are cut.
Telephone callers to the PRTB are now being told the public phone service will only be available between 9.30am and 1pm Monday to Fridays. Apparently a full-time phone service is no longer possible “due to resource constraints.”
Will the hospitals, the Garda, the fire service or even the dole office be adopting the same approach now that their resources are also under threat?
Readers will be relieved to know the staff of the PRTB are not too stressed out in newly refurbished offices on an upper floor of O’Connell Bridge House.
Luckily for them, they do not have to meet the paying clients, as their website informs the public that all correspondence “must be taken by telephone, post or email”. The board does not disclose its address, preferring to quote Box No 11884 in Dublin 2.
But anyone who goes to the bother of taking the lift to an upper floor of the high-rise block on the corner of D’Olier Street can drop their application into a mailbox in the foyer and at the same time have a peep through the glass partition into the stress-free surroundings.
