Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 20 February 2013

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Social Protection

Social Welfare Appeals: Discussion with Department of Social Protection

1:10 pm

Photo of Aengus Ó SnodaighAengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Go raibh maith ag na hoifigigh as an méid a bhí le rá acu.

I find these sessions both useful and informative in the context of the data provided. I have dealt with a number of social welfare appeals on behalf of constituents and fully understand the complexity of the cases which come before our guests and why there may be delays in individual cases. I am also aware of the workload involved.

I have always found the officials I have dealt with to be courteous and helpful to appellants which is not to say that decisions are always favourable. There will always be those whose appeals are not allowed.

There are a number of issues to be addressed in relation to appeals. The first issue for the Department is the scale of appeals, which is stark. Another issue is the startling statistics on delays in processing appeals. Many appeals decisions are favourable to appellants. While I am not suggesting the Department should not uphold appeals, it indicates an underlying flaw in the initial processing of applications. People who make applications are not being assisted with complex forms. To this day, there are forms in which you insert your name, address, PPS number, age and grandmother's maiden name, the last of which I had to ascertain for my father-in-law recently. That information is already on file and on a computer already. It is daunting for people who do not often engage with services or who are semi-literate. They should be able to give their PPS number at a social welfare office and have those details come up unless there has been a change. A grandmother's maiden name will not have changed. They are simple things but the system is complex. The initial application process must improve. If it does, the Department will find it is not overturning decisions on appeal. I have argued with the Department that before an application goes to appeal, it should be flagged that people can apply for a review first. A simple thing like a phone call from a deciding officer to say he or she has not been supplied with a particular letter whether as a result of an oversight or because it has not been obtained from a hospital would reduce the costs to the Department.

I am worried about the figures before the committee. I acknowledge that there has been a great deal of progress. The Department has outlined the reasons for delays in medical assessments with three new medical assessors having been appointed while one is on maternity leave and eight more are to be employed later this year. Hopefully, those appointments will address the five key medical claims. The figures supplied to the committee show that there are 37 schemes in total, of which 23 involve average waiting times of more than 40 weeks. Of those, nine involve waiting times of more than a year. If one rules out the medical assessments, seven schemes have waiting times of more than 50 weeks and 15 of more than 40 weeks. It is not just the medical end of things that needs to be addressed. I remember that when the Department made a previous presentation to the committee we were told that the additional staff rehired for one year were supposed to do the devil and all and they did for a while. The progress made in 2011 was, however, undermined in 2012. What changes will we see for next year?

The second table in the presentation document circulated to the committee shows that significant progress has been made in the appeals office to deal with the backlog in invalidity pension and disability allowance appeals. The figures suggest, however, that there has been an increase in delays within the Department itself. There has been a substantial increase in the delay in carer's allowance which has gone from 19.8 weeks to 34 weeks. The delay is also increasing in relation to invalidity pension within the Department while it is coming down in the appeals office. On foot of the recession and the severe resultant distress, a lot of people have raised with me the issue of the supplementary welfare allowance, which is an emergency payment. If it is refused, an applicant has absolutely nothing. While the waiting time for a summary decision is not too bad at 17.6 weeks, the waiting time for an appeal is 22.9 weeks. While the delay may sound good by comparison with delays in other appeals, it means a family or a person will be basically destitute for that time. Can that be addressed? They are people who do not have another payment on which to rely.

I do not know if the Department has experienced the same thing, but I find increasingly that where an appeal has been allowed, there is a delay by the Department in implementing the decision. If an appeal is allowed on 1 January, it is sometimes the end of January before an appellant receives a payment. It is even longer in some cases where people apply for backdated payments to which they are entitled. In some cases, it has been a number of months. I do not know whether it is a fault of the Department or the result of another backlog.

I raised with the appeals office previously that one of the delays in processing files results from the need to physically transfer the files. Has progress been made to transfer files electronically to ensure that the consideration of a file can begin more quickly and that the process starts immediately where a medical assessment is required and even before an assessor can fully consider it?

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