John Halligan (Waterford, Independent)
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To ask the Minister for Social Protection the reason behind the decision to allocate further staff resources to new applications for carer's allowance in an effort reduce processing times while old applications, that is, those received prior to a certain date are still being subjected to delays, some of which have already been waiting over a year for a decision; her vies on whether it would have been more prudent to allocate the extra staff to clear the backlog while still dealing with newer applications at a speedier pace; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [48842/12]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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I acknowledge that the time taken to process carer’s allowance claims at present is not satisfactory but I am satisfied that the Department is taking appropriate action to resolve the situation.

Carer’s allowance section has recently completed a major service delivery modernisation project to improve the efficiency with which it processes applications from clients for carer’s allowance. The project involved the development of IT functionality and associated business process re-organisation. Full deployment of the new system for Carer’s Allowance was completed in June 2012.

Following the completion of the modernisation project, an in-depth business process improvement (BPI) project was completed for the carer’s allowance scheme. This project focused on optimising output and customer service and the reduction of backlogs. The first step in the elimination of the backlog is to ensure that there is sufficient capacity to deal with new work as it arrives. The outcome of the review is the division of work into two streams. One concentrates on dealing with new claim intake and processes these without delay and the other on the backlog which is ring-fenced with a clear and targeted plan for its elimination. Additional resources have been added to the backlog clearance team. Implementation of the plan commenced on Monday 3 September and will be closely monitored and managed to ensure it achieves its objectives. A noted increase in the number of claims processed was achieved in September and October, where claims processed substantially exceeded claim intake, and this increase continues into November. However, it will take a number of months before the backlog is reduced to an acceptable level. The allocation of available resources to this task continues to be monitored.