John Brady
Question:77. Deputy John Brady asked the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the wait time for processing appeals; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [46860/18]
View answerTuesday, 13 November 2018
Questions (77)
Oral answers (6 contributions)
Will the Minister outline the current waiting times for the appeals process across all social welfare payments?
All decisions taken by my Department's deciding officers and designated persons are appealable to the chief appeals officer. Approximately 85% of all claims are awarded in the first instance and just 1% are appealed annually. Nevertheless, my Department is concerned that these cases are dealt with as quickly as possible.
Significant efforts and resources have been devoted to reforming the appeal process in recent years. As a result, appeal processing times improved from 52.5 weeks for an oral hearing in 2011 to 26.4 weeks in 2017 and from 25.1 weeks for a summary decision in 2011 to 19.8 weeks in 2017. The most recent figures for the period January to October 2018 are 30.5 weeks for an oral hearing and 25.3 weeks for a summary decision.
The time taken to process an appeal reflects a number of factors including that the appeals process is quasi-judicial and decisions have to be formally written up to a quasi-judicial standard because they are subject to review by the High Court. Accordingly, the desire to process appeals quickly must be balanced with the competing demand to ensure that decisions are consistent, of high quality and made in accordance with the legislative provisions and the general principles of fair procedures and natural justice.
A number of new appeals officers have joined the appeals office over the past 12 to 18 months to replace staff leaving on retirement. Given the complexity of the appeals process it takes some time for new staff to be trained up and develop expertise. This has led to longer processing times during this period.
The chief appeals officer has advised me that appeal processing times continue to be a priority for her office and that she expects processing times to improve as recently appointed staff develop the necessary experience and expertise to determine appeal decisions to the standard required.
An appellant can claim supplementary welfare allowance pending the outcome of his or her appeal.
I am looking at a reply I received to a parliamentary question last September and the appeal times are absolutely ludicrous and unacceptable. They vary from 17 to 64 weeks. A carer who appeals a decision, for example, must wait 29 weeks without a penny for a decision. A jobseeker must wait 37 weeks. That is ludicrous. I heard the Minister's response but what is going on in the appeals section? I accept her comments about new staff having to be trained to replace retiring staff, but that is only to tread water. What additional staff have been appointed to deal with this crisis in the appeals section?
I disagree with the Deputy's comment that they are without a penny. Nobody is forced to wait whatever length of time is involved, be it 17, 19 or 26 weeks, without a penny. That is what the supplementary welfare system is for. I encourage anybody who is waiting a lengthy period for an appeal decision to go to the local office where we will look after him or her financially. That is what we do. In addition to the continuous focus on improving appeal processing times, work is ongoing in the Department on a number of fronts in the context of improving the quality of first-instance decision-making, reducing the number of appeals being received and reducing the time taken in the Department to prepare the appeal submission. These include better information gathering at the initial claim stage, which hopefully leads to better outcomes and better decisions; better explanation of the reasons for any decision to make it easier for customers to understand the decisions we make and to reduce the number of unnecessary appeals; and a significant programme of training for decision makers on all aspects of their decision making functions.
Social welfare forms are consistently being monitored to ensure they capture sufficient information at the claims stage. In recent years, for example, improved claim forms were developed for the domiciliary care allowance application and that has caused the number of weeks people are waiting for the initial decision to reduce drastically. We did something similar recently in the case of the carer's allowance application with the Carers Association. Again, we expect it to yield a number of results for us. Everything we do is to try to improve the situation.
Some measures have been taken to deal with the crisis across the board. The Minister knows, however, that when somebody applies to the community welfare officer, the matter is at the officer's discretion, in the first instance, and, second, it is means tested. Not everyone will get a penny from the community welfare officer. That is not the solution to the failure within the Department to deal with this situation. Yes, forms have to be simplified but in the majority of cases it is not forms being filled incorrectly that leads to appeals. The Minister did not answer my question about additional staff. A key failure is that there are not enough staff to deal with the level of appeals. Perhaps she will answer that question. In addition, other means must be explored. What are the Minister's views on accelerating the appeals? She referred to simplifying forms and other measures. I would be interested in hearing about them.
First, the vast majority of schemes that are appealed are allowance schemes, all of which are means tested, so it is not fair to say on the one hand that I am expecting people to live without a penny and when I say that people do not have to wait but have the option of going to their social welfare office to then say they will be means tested. Most of these schemes are means tested anyway. People would not apply or qualify for them if their means were not within that realm.
Second, there are almost 6,000 people working in the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection. I cannot answer the question about whether we have asked for more people in the appeals office. However, we have tried, particularly in the difficult economic circumstances in the last number of years, to do more with the people we have. In fairness, one can see the result in the fact that our appeal waiting times have come down drastically. The reasons are that we have improved efficiencies in how we collect our information, we have provided people with new forms to make it simpler and we have tried to help people to understand that they do not need to hold back some information for appeals because they expect that everything will be rejected in the first instance.
My main message is that, first, 85% of all applications that are made are found in the affirmative. In fact, the social welfare Bill tomorrow will provide for automating that to make it even faster for people. Second, nobody should be waiting without any money. If people are, they can go to their local community welfare office and we will look after them. We will continue to try to improve the turnaround level for decisions.