Social Welfare Payments Waiting Times

Wednesday, 10 February 2021

Questions (498)

Niamh Smyth

Question:

498. Deputy Niamh Smyth asked the Minister for Social Protection the waiting times for the processing of applications for carer’s allowance and carer's benefit; the number of applications waiting at present per county in tabular form; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [6717/21]

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Written answers

Minister for Social Protection

My Department is committed to providing a quality service to all its customers, ensuring that applications are processed and that decisions on entitlement are made as quickly as possible.

There are no delays in processing claims once the necessary information is provided. In January 2021 the average number of weeks to award new Carer's Allowance applications was 5 weeks and 4 weeks for new Carer's Benefit applications.

Significant improvements have been achieved in reducing the average time to process claims. In 2020 the average number of weeks to award a new Carer's Allowance claim was 7 weeks and 5 weeks for Carer's Benefit, reduced from 14 weeks for Carer's Allowance and 12 weeks for Carer's Benefit in 2019.

Claim processing is kept under active review. The target for the Carer's Allowance scheme is to process 75% of claims in 11 weeks. The average processing time for Carer's Allowance at the end of January 2021 was 5 weeks and 95% of claims were processed within 11 weeks.

The current number of applications pending for these schemes are as follows.

County	Carer's Allowance Pending Claims	County	Carer's Benefit Pending Claims
CARLOW	6	DUBLIN	49
CAVAN	17	CORK	33
CLARE	21	GALWAY	13
CORK	124	TIPPERARY	12
DONEGAL	51	KERRY	11
DUBLIN	249	REMAINING COUNTIES	90
GALWAY	63	TOTAL	208
KERRY	38
KILDARE	39
KILKENNY	19
LAOIS	15
LEITRIM	13
LIMERICK	49
LONGFORD	14
LOUTH	41
MAYO	34
MEATH	35
MONAGHAN	12
OFFALY	24
ROSCOMMON	25
SLIGO	17
TIPPERARY	40
WATERFORD	32
WESTMEATH	19
WEXFORD	56
WICKLOW	36
TOTAL	1089