asked the Minister for Social Welfare if he has plans to delegate decision making on social welfare claims to local officials and if he will make a statement on the matter.
Written Answers. - Social Welfare Claims.
257.
The only major schemes at present operated by the Department's local offices are the unemployment benefit and assistance payments and decisions in relation to these schemes are made in most cases by locally based deciding officers. Decisions which are referred to headquarters are those of a complex nature relating mainly to means-testing and cases of doubtful entitlement to benefit. There has been a programme underway for some time to devolve as many of these decisions as possible to local employment exchanges and considerable progress has been made in relation to certain large exchanges in Dublin and Cork. This process, however, does impose an extra burden on the offices concerned which are already heavily burdened with their current workload. Extension of the process will be made to other exchanges as circumstances permit.
Formal decisions on claims under the Department's remaining schemes for pensions, benefits, assistance and allowances are made by statutorily appointed deciding officers in the Department's headquarters in Dublin. In many cases decisions are based on the reports of local officers who interview the claimants in their own homes or in the local offices. This arrangement is designed to provide advantages relating to impartiality and a degree of uniformity on the part of deciding officers in addition to certain economies of administration. No changes are planned in these arrangements in the near future.
Because of the complexity of the various schemes and the necessary interaction between them, local offices could not be expected to deal with all the schemes in advance of computerisation of their operations. While computerisation is being planned for, it will not be available to the local offices for some considerable time. Nevertheless, visual display terminals linked to the Department's computers have been installed in a number of local information offices to provide a rapid inquiry service in relation to disability benefit claims and other services as they become computerised. It is intended to extend this inquiry service as quickly as resources allow.