Vol. 540 No. 1
389 Mr. McGrath asked the Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs the action he has taken to speed up the processing of applications for one parent family payments within his Department; the average waiting time for processing these applications; and his views on whether these delays are satisfactory. [20219/01]
Claims under the one parent family payment scheme are processed from my Department's office in Sligo. This office also administers all of the main pensions schemes for which the Department is responsible.
In the case of the one parent family payment scheme, around 18,000 claims a year – the equivalent to about 350 per week – are being received at present. Over the past 12 months, the average number of weeks to decide a claim was ten weeks in the case of unmarried claimants and 14 weeks in the case of separated claimants.
The time taken to process individual claims varies significantly having regard to the difficulty or otherwise in establishing the circumstances in each case. It should be noted, however, that a large majority of applicants are in receipt of another social welfare payment while their claim is being processed. Such payment will normally continue until entitlement to one-parent family payment is determined. Every effort is being made to process applications as quickly as possible and to minimise the time during which applicants receive these alternative forms of support.
It is intended to devolve the administration of the one-parent family payment to the Department's network of local offices around the country. This will assist in reducing claim processing times, through closer linkage with the local investigative officer network. As part of this process, a project to test the localisation concept is being piloted in one of the Departments regions – the Dublin west region. The experience gained in this pilot will be fed into the further development of the localisation of this scheme.
