Vol. 514 No. 1
196 Mr. Wall asked the Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs the number of officials of his Department dealing with appeals; if there is a backlog of appeals; if so, if he will provide extra staff to deal with the situation; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [3711/00]
The social welfare appeals process is quasi-judicial and is governed by legislation and case law and equally binding requirements of natural justice and the courts. These procedures, statutory and otherwise, are designed to ensure every appeal gets due and fair consideration. Such a process is inevitably time consuming. Inevitably, also, there will always be some considerable number of appeals on which work is in progress.
More than 15,000 appeals were received by the social welfare appeals office in 1999, an increase of over 10% on the 1998 figure and the number of appeals on which work was in progress at end 1999 was 6,947.
Two additional appeals officers were appointed in 1997 to deal with a then increasing work load and two more have been assigned this month. Currently there are 16 appeals officers and 33 other staff assigned to the appeals office. It is anticipated that the assignment of additional resources will lead to an improvement in the situation and the matter will be kept under review.
