Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 19 December 2018
80. Deputy James Browne asked the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection her plans to address delays affecting benefit and allowance payments; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [52800/18]
View answerMy Department is committed to providing a quality service to all its customers. This includes ensuring that applications are processed as quickly as possible.
In general, social welfare schemes with a number of complex qualifying conditions can take longer to process.
Where any scheme area experiences delays, all possible steps are taken to improve processing times. This includes the assignment of additional resources, where available, and the review of business processes, to ensure the efficient processing of applications.
My Department has deployed additional staff to process new Illness Benefit claims received and resolve issues being encountered by existing applicants.
The average waiting time for a decision on a new carer's allowance application in November was 16 weeks.
This showed an improvement on the October figure of 17 weeks and was achieved by the re-assignment of staff from other areas of the Longford Centralised Schemes Office to claims processing in October. I expect that this improvement will continue over the coming weeks.
I hope this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.
