Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 27 November 2012
362. Deputy Peadar Tóibín asked the Minister for Social Protection the current number of outstanding applications for invalidity pension, broken down by months outstanding, the number of medical staff employed to conduct medical reviews and the number of additional staff deployed to clear the backlog. [52292/12]
View answerThe following is a breakdown of Invalidity Pension claims pending, illustrated in tabular form for ease of reference.
INVALIDITY PENSION CLAIMS - DURATION PENDING
|
< 1 month |
> 1 month and < 6 months |
< 6 months and < 1 year |
> 1 year |
|
818 |
1109 |
1225 |
1409 |
The processing times of individual invalidity pension claims may vary in accordance with their relative complexity in terms of the qualifying criteria. In addition, factors outside the Department’s control can have an impact, for example, insufficient information received from claimants at time of application and delays in claimants furnishing the information requested. The above figures include approximately 900 EU and bilateral cases awaiting decision which have a significantly longer processing time, the majority of which fall into the >1 year category.
Following an intensive backlog elimination project in invalidity pension section, all claims which were backlogged have now been examined and are awaiting a medical assessment and/or any additional information requested from the customer. Upon receipt of the necessary information, a decision will be made without delay. The majority of those claims fall into the category of >1 month and <1 year.
It should also be noted that claims from customers whose illness benefit was due to expire were prioritised for processing. Therefore, most of the customers currently awaiting decision are in receipt of illness benefit at present.
At present, approximately 220 new invalidity pension claims are received in the Department each week and these are examined within two days of receipt. Where a medical assessment and/or further information are required these are requested. Upon completion of the medical assessment and receipt of any further information required, these claims are processed without delay.
There is a current cadre of 27 medical assessors including the Chief Medical Advisor and the Acting Deputy Chief Medical Advisor. The medical assessors are fully qualified and experienced medical practitioners who must have at least 6 years satisfactory experience in the practice of medicine since registration with the Medical Council. Many of the medical assessors have specialist post-graduate qualifications and all have experience/training in human disability evaluation.
The delay in processing medical assessments is due to a number of factors such as the increase in volume of customer claims to particular schemes, the time involved in assessing cases where there is lengthy medical evidence to be assessed and the recent retirement of 4 of the medical assessors. The Department is addressing this issue and 3 new medical assessors have commenced employment with the Department since 1 November 2012, from a panel of 14 which was set up following a competition as arranged by the Public Appointments Service.
Six additional staff were assigned to the invalidity pension area in an effort to deal with the backlog which has been reducing steadily since June 2012. The number of invalidity pension claims awaiting decision at the end of May 2012 was 7007 – this has reduced to 4561 at the end of October 2012 and is continuing to reduce.
