Deputy Casey gave notice of his intention to raise on the Adjournment the subject matter of Question No. 19 on today's Order Paper.
Adjournment Debate. - Disability Benefit Claimant.
I do not propose to delay the House very long but first of all, I want to thank the Chair for permitting me to raise this very important matter on the Adjournment. I feel, from my personal contacts with the Minister, that he appreciates the invitation by me to discuss this matter. I have heard him to say on many occasions in this House that he would not tolerate any bad handling of claims for insurance benefit by any of the officers of his Department. In tabling this questions, I am not suggesting that the way it has been handled is typical of the way the Department handles all claims but I am saying that it typifies in many ways the manner in which numerous claims for social welfare benefit are handled by his Department. I am not criticising the Minister. I am simply looking for his co-operation which I am quite sure will readily be available to me.
In putting down this question, I am sure the callous and unchristian manner in which the officers of his Department dealt with an unfortunate insured person—that is, a person who paid insurance to cover herself against the hazards of sickness or unemployment—will not be condoned by the Minister. I hope he will accept my criticism of his Department in the spirit in which it is given. This is an unfortunate case and it is not the only one. Many of us have been generalising over a long period of time and, knowing that we did generalise, the Minister asked us to come along with specific cases. I feel that this is one which typifies the manner in which very many cases are, I am sorry to say, handled by the Department of Social Welfare.
The lady in question—her insurance number is 542096—is an insured person in full benefit and entitled to disability benefit from the Department of Social Welfare in the event of illness. She fell ill on 1st June of this year and made her claim in the ordinary way. In reply to my question today, the Minister told me that, arising out of that claim, she had been paid the appropriate benefit on 4th June, that is, three days after falling ill, to 12th July. She then received notice that she was to attend before the medical referee of the Department. According to the reply I received today, she was examined by the medical referee on 12th July. Again in accordance with the information I received from the Minister, it took the medical referee ten days to report to the Department on his medical examination. His report was received in the Department on 22nd July. This woman fell ill on 1st June. We are now up to 22nd July.
The lady duly received notification that, arising out of the medical adjudication, her claim was disallowed as from 13th July, that is, the day after she was examined by the medical referee. Then, according to practice, she was also notified on that day, in the same communication from the Department, that if she wished to express any dissatisfaction she should notify the Department when they would send out to her the official appeals form which she should fill up and which would enable her to have an oral examination as to the basis for her claim. I want to convey particularly to the Minister that that lady expressed her dissatisfaction. She wrote to the Department on 15th July and sought a form whereby she could make an appeal in accordance with the code of social welfare legislation. That form did not issue from the Department until 17th August.
In other words, having done what she was invited to do—to express her dissatisfaction—it took a month and two days for the Minister's Department to carry out the very ordinary and easy exercise of putting the stereotyped form into an envelope and addressing it to this lady. Of course, in the meantime, she was receiving no benefit whatsoever. Her appeal was hanging fire. Apparently, at that stage, there was no question of the dispute regarding the medical evidence: it was purely an administrative job. Any junior clerk in the Department of Social Welfare, any office boy in the Department of Social Welfare, on receipt of the notice of dissatisfaction from the lady in question, could get this printed form— there must be millions of them—put it into an envelope and send it off to her. It took them a month and two days to do it.
On receipt of the regulation form, the lady made her appeal. She filled up the form with all the relevant details and sent it back to this Department on the same day—a month and two days after she had made her original request. When she got it, she filled it up and sent it back: that was on 18th August. Let us not forget, now, that the original date of her illness was 1st June. She sent back the form on 18th August and all was silence after 18th August. Not a word was said, not a communication did she receive. No social welfare officer called on her but, lo and behold, a month and a day after that—after a month and two days, first of all—she received a document. I have here the original document dated 19th September:
Ábhar Disability Benefit Appeal.
Fuarthas do litir dar dáta 16/9/66...
That was fine, was it not? The original illness was on 1st day of June and, at long last, on 19th September this is received from
Mise, le meas,
L. Ó h-Uanacháin,
Rúnaí.
And he tells her:
táthar ag féachaint chuici.
She hears no more from that day, 19th September, until 27th September when, lo and behold, what does she get but another note—a printed stereotyped note—exactly similar to the one she got before, addressed to her from Áras Mhic Dhiarmada and dated 27th September. What do they say to the lady at that stage? Again:
Fuarthas do litir dar dáta 16/9/66 agus táthar ag féachaint chuici.
The same gentleman's name is appended to this. He is again "Mise, le meas, L. Ó h-Uanacháin, Rúnaí". She has, of course, been getting no money. Nobody has adjudicated on her claim. She is told in another document—I am sure the Minister took a note of this today when I raised it by way of supplementary question— that
your case has been submitted to an appeals officer who will have an oral hearing of the matter at an early date before determining the question in dispute.
That issued from the Minister's Department on 14th September. It is now 20th October and this unfortunate insured person has received no indication as to when the oral hearing will be held. The Minister in his reply to me today on clause (k) of my question in regard to the date on which it is anticipated the oral hearing will be held, said it would be held in the week commencing 7th November next.
This matter has been going on now since 1st June and, remembering the Minister had notice of my question, I would have expected him to get on his high horse and unearth the officer in his Department who made such a bungle of the whole thing; but the Minister comes along and brazenly says that the hearing of the oral evidence, which was promised on 14th September, will now be heard in the week commencing 7th November. In reply to the last part of my question in which I asked him if he would mind indicating the date on which it is anticipated the final determination of the appeal will be issued, he said in the week following the oral hearing unless further investigation or medical examination is required. I ask you.
I said at the outset—I hope the Minister will accept this in view of his previous statements with regard to delay in payments—that I think this is a scandalous example of civil servants choking themselves with red tape and choking the unfortunate people who should be in receipt of social welfare. I do not know what the Minister will tell me, but he certainly will not convince me, and I am certain he will not convince the House, that there is any justification at all, no matter what the ramifications of the administrative machine in his Department are, for leaving this unfortunate woman without benefit. Today, she is told, through me, her parliamentary representative, that they may hear the oral evidence on 7th November and the case may be finally determined a week after that, unless further investigations are necessary.
That is not good enough. It is a disgrace to the Minister's Department. It is callous, uncharitable and unChristian. Where in hell does the Minister think this woman is getting money in the meantime to keep body and soul together? Surely he does not think that, while his higher minions in Aras Mhic Dhiarmada are pontificating on this, throwing it from one basket to another, that she is receiving manna from Heaven. It is not as if she is looking for charity. She is an injured person entitled to payment but, because of the inefficiency and stupid bungling of the Minister's Department, that benefit has been denied her.
As the Minister knows, if there are delays in matters of this kind, I usually write to the Minister himself and ask for his assistance in investigating the matter. I must say that assistance is invariably forthcoming. But these would be minor cases. On many occasions the Minister has expressed the view that he will not tolerate such conduct as that outlined by me and, because of that, I took this opportunity of putting down a question to pinpoint this case; it typifies the manner in which the officers of his Department handle the claims of these unfortunate people, people who are not able to fight for themselves. But I will fight for them. I am not criticising the Minister. I am simply making him a present of this and I hope that he will investigate the matter fully and, as a result, overhaul his Department to ensure that nothing like this will ever happen again.
I should, I think, go through this matter fully to show that Deputy Casey's interpretation presents an exaggerated picture of the delay that has occurred in this case. Before I do so, however, I should admit that this case should have been disposed of long before now. It is not correct for the Deputy, though, to say that it has taken over a month to send an appeal form to this lady. The first notification of dissatisfaction with the decision of the deciding officer was received in my Department on 22nd July and the appeal form was issued on 15th August. There was unnecessary delay there, but that delay did not in any way impede the process of dealing with the appeal because, as Deputy Casey knows, the second medical examination took place on 16th August. In a case such as this, a second medical examination was obviously necessary.
This is a case—not, as Deputy Casey has said, of an insured person entitled to benefit because that has not been established at all—in which the deciding officer has decided on the basis of the medical referee's report that the insured person is not entitled to benefit. Now, when, in those circumstances, an insured person appeals, it is obviously desirable that there should be a second medical opinion available as soon as possible. In other words, it would not be helpful to the person concerned to have the appeal decided without first of all arranging for a second medical examination. Because of the fact that it is not administratively possible to have medical referees immediately available, this second examination can, in the normal course, take up to five or six weeks to arrange. In this case it did not take this long; it was carried out on the 16th August, so that the delay in issuing the appeals form did not hold up this essential part of dealing with the appeal.
There are a number of other misinterpretations of dates and so on but it is a fact, at any rate, that the case was sent to the Appeals Branch of my Department early in September and that was not an excessively long time. The delay we have to deal with is the delay from early in September to early in November, when it has been arranged to hear the appeal. Again, in the case of oral hearings of appeals it is administratively necessary to arrange itineraries for appeals officers. While it is desirable that they should be held as soon as possible, obviously it would not be physically possible to have an appeals officer ready to go to any part of the country to hear an appeal immediately the case was referred to the Appeals Branch. However, I do agree that two months is too long a period to take to arrange for the hearing of such oral appeals and I do not see fully why it should have taken that long.
I keep a continuous eye on whether or not we have sufficient appeals officers available for this work and to the best of my knowledge there is not a shortage of appeals officers at present, but it would normally take some little time to arrange for an oral appeal to be heard. As I say, I do not think there is a shortage of appeals officers. Obviously, it would not be desirable to put on such pressure that it might result in more of these cases being dealt with without oral appeals. Where it appears possible that a decision favourable to the appellant might be arrived at at an oral hearing, whereas if it were to be decided on the basis of the documentary evidence before the officer it would be against the appellant, it is desirable that an oral appeal should be heard in all cases where there is any such possibility. Therefore, it would not be a good thing to bring too much pressure to bear to have these things dealt with immediately. It is reasonable that there should be some delay in arranging for oral appeals but I fully agree that two months delay, as occurred in this case, is more than could be acceptable. Considering the number of these cases which are dealt with there are very few indeed in which anything approaching this length of time is taken up in having them decided. I am always ready to investigate any particular case in which excessive delay occurred and as I said, I think two months was more than should have elapsed.
The Dáil adjourned at 5.25 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Tuesday, 25th October, 1966.