Ms Geraldine Gleeson:

To respond to Deputy Griffin's question on the variations in waiting times on a county by county basis, I understand the Deputy was not referring to the medical schemes. Every nine to 13 weeks we examine the files that are with local offices to identify if there are blockages in a particular area. We have a system with each of the local offices, whereby they are sent a reminder in the case of certain files. This system works well because there are so many offices that the numbers in a particular office are relatively small. This means that when one puts pressure on a local office to provide certain files, it is able do so. The system in this regard is different from that for medical schemes which are all bunched together.

The Deputy referred to disability allowance and invalidity pension appeals in the context of reviews rather than initial applications and raised the issue of priority. I assume priority is afforded within the medical assessment side in order that if a decision is reviewed, these appeals receive priority. That is the correct approach. These schemes do not receive priority in my office. The only scheme that receives priority is the social welfare allowance scheme.

Every appeals officer will agree that a higher bar is set in a review case, by which I mean that where someone's payment is being stopped, we will hold the Department strongly to account to ensure it shows there has been some improvement in the condition of the individual concerned. If we do not see such an improvement, that would be the basis on which we would allow a case. While we do not prioritise such cases, a higher bar is set for cases in which a person who has had the benefit of a payment on the basis that he or she had a certain condition and subsequently has that payment removed following a review. To uphold such a decision, there would have to be a clear understanding of the reason the payment was removed, which means one would need to see that there has been an improvement in the condition of the person since the payment was granted.

On the issue of projection beyond 2013, as I often state, the appeals process, by definition, is lengthy.

That is particularly the case where it is an oral hearing. In the good years the oral hearing would have taken around six months for the total process. Certainly, we would hope to get back to that. The reason it takes six months is for good reason as there are steps along the way. There is the review by the deciding officer, the review by the medical assessor back to us, and now an oral hearing must be scheduled. We examined this some years ago and decided that adds at least eight weeks to the process. If an appeals officer decides it must be an oral hearing, he has to wait for the oral hearings for that county, he has to schedule them and there must be a premises. He must give three weeks notice to the appellant and notice to the witness. There are a lot of logistics that go into setting up a hearing. To answer the Deputy's question, we would hope to get back to an average of six months for an oral hearing.