Brian Stanley presses minister on delays to disability and carers claims

The question I have for your Minister is regarding the delay around reviews for decisions on disability and carers allowance. Currently there are long waits for it. It needs to be addressed and I hope that your department is going to take action on this. Mr. Minister. I think that the first question is committed to providing quality service to all, ensuring that applications are processed and that decisions on entitlement are made in a timely manner. We absolutely understand within the department the pressures that are faced by people and we ensure the claims are processed quickly and efficiently. Currently there are almost 170,000 people in receipt of disability allowance and over 100,000 people in receipt of carers allowance. The number of people in receipt of DA has increased by almost 50 per cent. The number of people in receipt of carers allowance has increased by 67 per cent over the past 10 years. The processing times for individual claims may vary in accordance with the relative complexity of each application and particularly in terms of the main qualifying criteria, each individual circumstances and the information that is provided in support of the claim. When determining suitability for disability allowance evidence needs to be examined in respect of the medical condition, the extent to which it restricts them from taking up employment, their means and habitual residency. Similarly when examining suitability for carers allowance, caring needs are also examined. To assist the department to make timely and fair decisions, we need to ensure that we have complete forms and supporting documentation is attached. Complaints with incomplete information will take longer to process. In recent years my department has introduced a wide range of initiatives aimed at streamlining the processing of claims using modern technology. Operational processes, procedures and the organisation of work are continually reviewed to ensure that processing capability is maximised. I am pleased to inform Deputy Stanley that we are currently meeting and exceeding our processing target for the disability allowance scheme which aims towards 75 per cent of applications within 10 weeks. For carers allowance we aim towards 80 per cent of applications within 10 weeks. The average processing time for each scheme for both schemes at the moment is currently six weeks. I would certainly like to engage with you in relation to any specific case that is outside of those periods and we are continuously trying to reduce those processing times. Thank you Stanley. Mr Stanley. The reason I am bringing up this is that a person who will find themselves out of work through no fault of their own due to a disability or somebody who has to give up work to care for a loved one and put in a claim for carers allowance. Genuine cases. I understand that it is complex, I understand that you know there is a number of different pieces in terms of the judgment, in terms of people being eligible or not being eligible. The Eroctis Healthline is a help but it is not a silver bullet. I want to say that to you. The experience we have had is that some of them are taking four and five months which can cause serious problems, even in straightforward cases where there is a missing document and then the document is supplied. Then if there is an appeal, the appeals are taken up to 12 months Minister, that is our experience. I know you mentioned to me previously that if I had an individual case I want to go back and check where those cases are at. If there is one of them I will be bringing to your attention but you know you have an answer that you are reading out from the Department and I am not saying the officials are giving you false information but just the experience we are having recently is not that. I would say that to you. Minister. I thank the Deputy for your feedback and we have been discussing this in the context of preparing your question. We are putting a huge amount of resources into appeals in particular at the moment. We have 20 extra staff have been assigned to the appeals unit, they have been trained up and now they are working and you can see in relation to for instance domiciliary care appeals, they have reduced from about 1200 being on hand at the middle of May of this year to just over 600 in the middle of June and the majority of those 600 are cases from April, May and June. We will be focusing the extra resources in the appeals unit now on CARES as well to ensure that any appeals backlogs that are there don't have the that figure with me at the moment but there's no claim should be taking up to a year to assess and if there are delays like that I do want to hear about them and the department wants to hear about them. We have a time set of six weeks in relation to both CARES and disability to turn around an application but it is also important that we get the fullest possible information to back up and support the claim so the more information we have the quicker we will make the decision. Mr Stanley? Six weeks would be, if to be done within a six weeks period that would be certainly very good and welcome to the fact that there is a target there for that because without a target nothing is achieved, you know things move. You are correct, the more information that is available and often you know people are making these claims for it and they are not sure of maybe the language the department is using. It has been simplified in recent years and that is welcome. I just think that you know it is important that we try and achieve that target. As I said earlier on, somebody who finds themselves out of work through no fault of their own because of a disability or somebody who has to give up their job, which you and I will often come across this in the constituency where they give up work to care for and I think it is really important that we try and financially support them and we must remember that while they are waiting to have nowhere else to go, the community welfare office room maybe, but there are very strong rules around that and it can be difficult and that can take time even within itself, but I think it is really important that we try and I do not know how any difficulties there are with this. The appeals process, the deliratory part of it, that does need to be looked at. Minister. I have taken the time over the last several weeks to try and visit all the department's regional offices where many of these claims are dealt with, including here in our head office in Dublin and I have met all the staff and they are fantastic, they are doing absolutely fantastic work each with nearly 7,000 members of staff across the Department of Social Protection, many of whom are managing these claims and many of whom are turning them around as quickly as is possible. Where there are information gaps we try and address them as quickly as is possible and we are investing significantly in technology to try and assist that as well. As you said we have tried to change the language and try to make it more inclusive but if there are things where that is not happening you know we will address that. The department and our staff are very very committed to doing that. As I said in Peel's we have appointed 20 extra appeals officers, they come with experience of managing and processing claims and I visited the Social Welfare Appeals Office last week to meet them and to see their work at first hand and they are all very focused and working very hard at reducing any backlogs and you know the DCA, Dancidary Carelands, backlog is one good example where a very focused effort has reduced that backlog by nearly half in over a month. Question.