The Social Welfare Appeals Office has advised me that an appeal by the person concerned was registered in that office on 23 August 2011. It is a statutory requirement of the appeals process that the relevant Departmental papers and comments by or on behalf of the Deciding Officer on the grounds of appeal be sought. These papers were received in the Social Welfare Appeals Office on 27 November 2011 and assigned to an Appeals Officer 14 February 2012. The case is currently under consideration and the person concerned will be contacted within the next week with the outcome of her appeal.
I am advised by the Social Welfare Appeals Office that, from about early 2009 the number of appeals received by that Office began to dramatically increase and by 2011 had more than doubled from an average of 15,000 per year to 32,000. The pressure placed on the office by this rapid increase in workload has impacted on the length of time taken to process appeals.
In an effort to reduce the processing times, the Department appointed 12 additional Appeals Officers between 2010 and 2011. In addition, a further 10 Appeals Officers, formerly employed by the Community Welfare Services (CWS) of the Health Service Executive joined the Office as part of the integration of the CWS appeals services into the Social Welfare Appeals Office. This brought the total number of Appeals Officers to 39. In addition to this the Office has improved its business processes and IT support.
As a result, based on figures for the first quarter of 2012, the average waiting time for appeals dealt with by summary decisions was 22.4 weeks and 40.9 weeks for those that required an oral hearing. The comparable times for 2011 were 25 weeks and 52.5 weeks.
The Social Welfare Appeals Office functions independently of the Minister for Social Protection and of the Department and is responsible for determining appeals against decisions on social welfare entitlements.