Ms Geraldine Gleeson:

I thank the members of the committee for giving me this opportunity to address them on the issue of social welfare appeals. The issue which members wish me to address today is the delay being experienced by appellants in the processing of those appeals. In my opening statement, I will outline the current position with regard to processing times and the number of cases on-hand, and also outline the likely outturn for this year.

As members are aware, the number of appeals submitted to the social welfare appeals office, SWAO, has increased dramatically since 2008 with the number of receipts doubling from an average of 15,000 a year to 35,484 in 2012. While this number is high, to put it in context, there is now on average in excess of two million claims made for payment across the range of social welfare schemes on an annual basis. Members will also be aware that as a result of actions taken in the SWAO to address this increase, including the assignment of additional appeals officers whose numbers have increased from around 17 to 40 and improved processes, the number of cases finalised has risen from an average of 13,500 to 32,558 in 2012. Nonetheless, because of the increase in the number of appeals, our customers have experienced significant and unacceptable delays in the time taken to conclude appeals.

As of 2012, there are two aspects to the delays being experienced. One is that the processing time for appeals covers all phases of the appeal process, including many elements which are outside the control of my office. In the current economic climate when all areas of the Department are under pressure, the reality is that an appeal case may experience several delays along the way. Delays can be experienced when the appeal is sent to the Department for a submission from the deciding officer who originally decided the case or in the medically based schemes where further examination by medical assessors is required and where most of them would get a second go at the cherry. In some cases where means might be the issue, there might be a subsequent investigation by a social welfare inspector. Each of these areas carries its own possible delay. The schemes which have the highest waiting times are the medically based schemes. I have provided members with a table showing the breakdown in processing times for these schemes between the Department and my office. I have picked the past six months of 2012 because that is when our own processing times began to significantly improve. I have also provided figures for January of this year. What the table shows is the appeals office significantly improved its processing times. For example, the first column which deals with carer's allowance shows that in 2011, the time taken in our office was 19.6 weeks. In 2012, the time taken was 13.2 weeks. The same is true for disability allowance so members can see that the time taken in the appeals office has diminished while the times for the Department have gone up. I will address the reason for that in a minute.

My office is liaising on a regular basis with the Department with a view to improving these processing times. I understand that the Department is actively involved in clearing backlogs on a number of these schemes. I am sure some members have been briefed on this. They include carer's allowance, invalidity pension and disability allowance. My understanding is that good progress is being made with these backlogs with the invalidity pension backlog fully processed, the carer's allowance backlog on target to be processed by the end of March and the disability allowance backlog on target to be processed by the end of June. The clearing of this high volume of initial claims has resulted in a large increase in the level of appeals at a time when all available resources in the Department are involved in claim processing. The Department informs me that as the backlogs are reduced, more resources will be focused on appeals with the intention of reducing delays within the Department.

Some delays have also developed in the processing of medical assessments and reviews due to a combination of factors including the increased workload for medical assessors and the reduced availability of medical assessors due to retirements. The Department is addressing this issue and I understand it recently ran a competition to establish a new panel of medical assessors. Three new medical assessors were appointed from this panel and have been working since November 2012. It is expected that a further eight medical assessors will be appointed in the near future.

The second issue relating to processing times was the very significant disparity between the time taken for a summary decision and an oral hearing. For example, in 2011, the average processing time for a summary decision was 25.1 weeks whereas for an oral hearing it was 52.5 weeks. This was a result of the operating model within my office whereby files were assigned to an appeals officer who either decided the appeal summarily or returned the file to be listed for an oral hearing, most likely by a different appeals officer.

This gave rise to an inherent delay because the file was placed in a second queue to await an oral hearing.

Under a new model which has been in operation since January 2012, where an officer is assigned a caseload, he or she will either decide cases summarily or conduct oral hearings, if they are warranted. This has rebalanced processing times between oral hearings and summary decisions. In 2012 the average length of time to deal with an oral hearing was 39.5 weeks, while for a summary decision it was 27.8 weeks. The overall reduction in this regard is 10.2 weeks.

The number of cases in hand at the end of January was 19,465. As of today, there are 1,000 fewer cases in hand. The figure of 19,465 is approximately 2,000 more than the number of cases in hand at the end of 2011. The reason for this is that receipts in 2012 rose as a result of the merging of the community welfare service with the Department's appeals service. In addition, the number of cases finalised in 2012 was down by a small margin, some 1,400. The reason for this was twofold. In the first instance, eight officers retired up to the end of 2011, which gave rise to a huge loss of experience in 2012. Also, between turnover and additional resources, 25 of our current complement of 40 appeals officers had less than 18 months experience at the end of 2012. Throughout last year the experience and capacity of these officers have increased. This is evidenced by that fact that of the 32,558 cases finalised in 2012, 12,835 were finalised in the first six months, while the other 19,723 were finalised in the second six months. In January this year the number of cases finalised was 3,746 as compared to 1,986 in January 2012.

With regard to the likely outturn in 2013, it is expected that the number of cases finalised will be some 6,000 higher than 2012. This is based on the results for the second six months of last year. If the number of cases received this year is the same as last year and if 39,000 are finalised, the balance in hand will drop to approximately 15,000.