Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 16 January 2013
498. Deputy Anne Ferris asked the Minister for Social Protection the number of outstanding claims awaiting decision for carer's allowance and for family income support; the average time for processing a claim; the reasons for the delay; the reasons the appeals office does not publish its decisions; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [1353/13]
View answerWhile the time taken at present to process some carer’s allowance claims is not satisfactory, good inroads have been made over the last number of months by my Department to clear the current backlog and a plan is in place to process the remaining backlogged claims by the end of Q1 2013. I am happy that the actions they are taking will achieve this.
The number of applications awaiting decision for carer's allowance at the end of December 2012 was approx. 8,550. The number of applications which were awaiting decision in mid-June 2012 was 11,600. Following the completion of a major service delivery modernisation project, an in-depth business process improvement (BPI) project was completed for the carer’s allowance scheme. This project focused on optimising output and customer service and the reduction of backlogs. The outcome of the review is the division of work into two streams. From Monday 3 September 2012, one team concentrates on dealing with new claim intake and processes these without delay and the other team is working on the backlog which is ring-fenced with a clear and targeted plan for its elimination. Additional resources have been allocation to this task and the claim clearance plan is continually monitored in order that the backlog is eliminated in the shortest possible timeframe.
With regard to family income supplement claims (FIS), at the end of December 2012 there were 7,360 new FIS applications and 3,391 renewal applications awaiting approval. FIS claims, both new and renewal, received on or after the 5th November 2012 are currently being processed without delay. An in-depth business process improvement (BPI) project has recently been completed for the FIS scheme. The outcome of this review is a detailed plan outlining the process required to manage both the continuous weekly intake and backlog claims clearance. This plan sees the current weekly new claim and renewal intake processed by one team, while the backlog is ring-fenced and a focused team assigned to this work with a clear plan for its elimination by end of Q1. Claims which are approved by the backlog team will be backdated to the date of claim or the date of expiry of the previous claim, as appropriate, and all arrears due will be paid.
The issue of publishing all appeal decisions was the subject of recent High Court case Ikraam Jama v Minister for Social Protection 11 October 2011 seeking that the Social Welfare Appeals Office would publish decisions, suitably anonymised, for the purpose of assisting appellants and their representatives in making an appeal. The Judge in that case found that there was no duty on the SWAO to maintain a database for public access.
In the course of that challenge, comparisons were drawn with the Social Security Commissioners in Northern Ireland, the Refugee Appeals Tribunal and the Equality Tribunal who do publish their decisions. In 2010, the Social Security Commissioners in Northern Ireland finalised 141 decisions, the Refugee Appeals Tribunal finalised 2,783 and the Equality Tribunal finalised 322 whereas the Social Welfare Appeals Office finalised 28,166 decisions in the same period. It is this very issue of scale that would make the provision of such a database a vast undertaking requiring the allocation of significant resources. The Chief Appeals Officer publishes a number of case studies in her annual report which serve to clarify the process by which appeals are determined.
