Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 15 December 2020
371. Deputy Catherine Murphy asked the Minister for Social Protection the number of cases of domiciliary care allowance under review; the number of reviews commenced, per quarter, in 2020; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [43238/20]
View answerThe Domiciliary Care Allowance (DCA) section in the Department has a dedicated review team who process reviews under a number of categories including:
- Reviews carried out on foot of customer requests following a negative decision.
- Reviews carried out as part of the appeal process
- Reviews as a result of referral by another area of the department.
- Scheduled medical reviews.
Statistics on reviews are not collated on a quarterly basis. To date in 2020, the DCA review team have been dealing with the following reviews initiated by the customer.
- 665 requests from customers to review their application following notification of disallowance.
- 1,433 cases where the customer has lodged an appeal with the Social Welfare Appeals Office (SWAO). All of these cases are reviewed by a deciding officer who will decide if the original decision should be revised or forwarded to the SWAO for their consideration.
- 280 customers who were awarded DCA contacted the section with backdating requests, requiring their original award date to be reviewed.
In mid 2019, the Department reintroduced a medical review process based on the recommended review date suggested by the Department’s medical assessors when the application was initially examined. The number of such reviews was set at 25 per week and this continued until the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic when such reviews were suspended due to the difficulties customers could have experienced in obtaining supporting documentation etc. Before the process was suspended in March 2020, 187 scheduled medical reviews had been initiated by DCA section.
The DCA section also initiated 460 control reviews, with the majority (372) stemming from automated referrals for review from other scheme areas in the Department where continued eligibility needed to be checked on foot of potential changes in circumstances of the customer or their dependents. 73 of these reviews yielded savings of over €100,000 for the Department. Because DCA is not means tested and is based primarily on care needs associated with children diagnosed with a severe/long term disability, relatively few cases are stopped on foot of reviews.
In total, 3,025 DCA reviews have been requested or initiated to date in 2020.
I hope this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.
