Ms Geraldine Gleeson:

The other big schemes include the jobseekers' schemes. Although there may be in individual cases, in general, there is not a long delay in getting files from local offices. I will come back to the issue about the community welfare office, but the main delays lie with the medical assessor. That is the first part. The second relates to the fact that the Department is working on digital documents. Unfortunately, in preparing a case for us, these must be printed off and pulled into a file, which results in a delay. As I said, much effort is going into speeding this up.

We can make recommendations on the forms and we do all the time. For example, we made recommendations on domiciliary care allowance and, in particular, the level of information being given to people who are turned down and the wording of the disallowance. There was a huge improvement in the wording after that recommendation was made.

The main development in regard to forms which is very welcome and which I have mentioned concerns the MR99 form designed for the medical schemes. It looks for the appellants' comments. For example, in the case of domiciliary care allowance, it asks about the interaction with the child, communication and all of the difficulties encountered on a day-to-day basis. It also asks for the person's own account. Appeals officers find this extremely useful.