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Social Welfare Benefits Waiting Times

Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 4 April 2019

Thursday, 4 April 2019

Questions (4)

Bríd Smith

Question:

4. Deputy Bríd Smith asked the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the reason for the backlog and delays in issuing social welfare payments; and the further reason for the delay of six months in relation to appeals. [15690/19]

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Oral answers (8 contributions)

I want to ask the Minister the reasons for delays in issuing social welfare payments. In her answer I hope the Minister will address the current situation. About one year ago her Department gave a briefing in the AV room, attended by our staff. At that time the Department acknowledged there was a waiting time for appeals of at least five months, and an overall waiting time for applications. In our experience with case work, the average wait for appeals is six to eight months. It is really unacceptable.

The Department is committed to providing a quality service to all the people who apply for the different schemes, ensuring that applications are processed as quickly as possible and that decisions on entitlements are made in the most efficient way.

In general, social welfare schemes such as these with a number of complex qualifying conditions can and do take longer to process.  Before a decision can be made for example, on entitlement to domiciliary care allowance, evidence must be provided and examined in respect of the additional care needs of the child.  Similarly, before a decision can be made on entitlement to a carer’s allowance or carer's benefit evidence must be provided in respect of the care recipient’s care requirements, the level of care the carer provides, and caree's means in some allowances.

It is also the case that in order to register their claim and establish an early entitlement or claim date, many people submit a claim without giving all the necessary supporting documentation on the first day.  I am not saying this, but it has been acknowledged to me by some of the NGOs. While this ensures people will be paid with arrears from an early effective date as early as they are entitled to it, it means that claims take longer to process if we have to go back to the customer and look for that missing information.

The Department is currently processing domiciliary care allowance claims within ten weeks and invalidity claims within seven weeks. Disability allowance claims are taking 14 weeks on average while carer's allowance applications are finally coming down and are now at 15 weeks. That is still three weeks more than our objective for every year.

I wish to reassure the Deputy that claims processing is kept under active review with all possible steps being taken to improve processing times. This includes significant additional resources, where available, and the review of business processes to ensure the efficient processing of applications. For example, additional staff have been temporarily reassigned to the carer's allowance area to work on claims processing. This has led to a reduction of three weeks in the processing times. We are still three weeks away from our target for every year so we still have a good way to go. We are committed to this and looking at it on a monthly basis.

I need not say this to the many people who suffer the anxiety of waiting for a decision on a payment, but the reason they are in the system applying for payment is because their level of income is so low that they rely on the State for help.

I had a young woman before me recently who was literally falling to pieces with grief. She was with her child. She is waiting for a decision on her application for disability payment. She has been waiting for 18 weeks already. She has a partner who earns money. She will be entitled to something – she has been told that much – but the decision has not been made yet. Anyway, it is not necessarily the case that because a partner lives in the same house, that partner will look after the financial needs of the applicant. While the needs of the applicant are not being looked after she is told she has to wait without any interim payment because she is not single.

Other problems arise, including problems to do with the waiting time on appeals for carer's allowance. I have a chart that shows the waiting times are not coming down in any significant way. In January 2018 the waiting time was 26.3 weeks. In January 2019 the waiting time was 28.4 weeks on appeal. Applications for illness benefits in January 2018 took 27.9 weeks on average and in January 2019 the figure was 41.1 weeks. The waiting times are actually going up and that is causing considerable stress.

The first thing I need to say to Deputy Smith is with regard to the lady she referred to. If Deputy Smith gives me her details I will intervene personally.

I need to put on record that anyone or everyone who is waiting for a decision for a payment for any of our schemes is entitled to apply for community welfare through our supplementary welfare allowance. Applicants will get it if they have a means need long before the decision is ever made.

That is only if a person is single.

If Deputy Smith wishes to give me the details of the lady later on, I will intervene.

I am not disputing the numbers cited by Deputy Smith. What I am saying is that we have taken several steps to try to remedy the difficulty we have with regard to a number of issues relating to the length of time for appeals.

The first point is that we need to put more staff in the area. We have a cap on our staff. It is only when staff resources become free in one section because they are no longer required that they can be moved to another section. That is what we did with the carer's allowance and our appeals recently. We are also in a recruitment process for deciding officers within our appeals section. When they come on board that will speed things up. We have also engaged extensively with the Carers Association and carer organisations in the past year to simplify our application form to try to make it easier, as we did with the domiciliary care allowance some years ago, a move that resulted in great improvements.

I refute what the Minister has said. Supplementary payments are not available to those who are not single. If a person is living with an applicant in the same household the applicant is not entitled to it.

Let us consider the statistics. It seems there may be a problem with the number of medical officers available to make decisions. It is in the areas of carers, disability and illness where the greatest waiting times exist on initial application and on appeal. Is there a shortage of medical officers?

I wish to bring another matter to the attention of the Minister while I have the opportunity. Does the Minister intend to employ more staff coming up to the summer months? A plethora of people are laid off for the summer, including staff who work in schools, and do not get paid for the summer months. These include everything from secretaries to special needs assistants and so on. They have to apply to go back on unemployment benefit on a temporary basis. Last year we had a queue of them coming in and out the door. They got their payments in September when the schools reopened but they needed their payment in June, July and August. It appears the Department is not ready for these scenarios, which repeat themselves year after year.

I am keen for the Minister to address my specific questions on medical officers, on being ready for people who will be laid off on a temporary basis and on the pattern such that anything requiring a medical decision causes more problems.

We have a full complement of medical officers. We are not in a recruitment phase. It is not the case that if we had more medical officers it would make it easier or quicker. It is a question of the complexity of the medical evidence that needs to be provided for us. That needs to be adjudicated upon and it is a difficult process. It needs to go back and forth. That is what causes the delay. The most effective way of producing a better outcome is to simplify that process. That is what we did with the Carers Association in the past year in a similar process to the process involving the domiciliary care allowance warriors some years ago. That has given us positive effects. The processing of application times for domiciliary care allowance is now down to seven weeks. The forum works for that and I am positive that the forum will work for this.

I did not say that anyone is entitled to social welfare assistance. I said anyone who has means and who is in need of social welfare assistance can get supplementary welfare allowance on a weekly basis regardless of whether the applicant has a partner. If the partner earns over the threshold, then the person will not get it because they would be sufficiently able to look after themselves. If the partner does not exceed the threshold, the Department is there to step in.

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