Ms Geraldine Gleeson:

As I said, the three of us meet regularly to discuss issues. There is also a project team in the Department which concerns itself with the medical schemes. It is simply an effort to bring together all of the various areas of the Department that impact on the schemes, and it is chaired by the deputy secretary of the Department. I am on that team or committee and continually feed in these issues. Therefore, there is a focus on driving this issue.

There were certainly issues with the illness schemes, but huge work has been done around clearing the backlogs. To an extent, I understand the concentration on fresh applications, which have had no chance, but progress is being made. The major project team and our group of three work together and we are focusing our efforts on ensuring progress.

Deputy Ó Snodaigh asked about revised decisions. Any revised decision made by a deciding officer must, by definition, be favourable. They are not allowed revise unfavourably while a decision is under appeal. With regard to cases that have been withdrawn, the majority of these occur in the case of illness benefit. These cases are different from others in that they concern the only medical scheme where all claimants are seen by a medical assessor. Therefore, the person who has been cut off has been seen. When the person makes an appeal, he or she is seen again by a different medical assessor. At that point, a letter goes out from my office informing the person he or she has been seen by a second medical assessor, has been found capable of work, asking whether he or she wishes to proceed with the appeal and, if so, on what grounds. The person is given six weeks to respond. If there is no response after the six weeks, the cases are withdrawn, but would be opened again if the person comes back. Generally that does not happen. This accounts for the majority of withdrawn cases.