Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, United Left) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 6:

In page 4, between lines 5 and 6, to insert the following:
“Amendment of Social Welfare (Consolidation) Act 2005
3.The Social Welfare (Consolidation) Act 2005 is amended by inserting the following after subsection (4) of section 311:“(5) (a) An Appeals Officer shall decide an appeal within a prescribed time of 60 working days from the date of receipt of the appeal.
(b) Where notice of a decision under section 311 is not given to the appellant who made the appeal concerned before the expiration of the period specified in section 311(5)(a), a decision upholding the appeal shall be deemed to have been made upon such expiration.
(c) An Appeals Officer may apply to the Chief Appeals Officer for an extension of time to consider the appeal in exceptional circumstances but the Appeals Officer must demonstrate the reasons for the delay and the appellant shall be informed of the reasons for the delay in writing.”.”.

This amendment is specifically around the length of time it has taken for a decision on an appeal to come back. I want to give one example, but I am sure there are many more. In a recent appeal case involving a disability payment the appeal was lodged on 18 June, but a reply was not received until 18 October. The reply was that there was an administrative issue and that the appeal had lapsed. It took us four months to get a reply stating the appeal should not have been made in the first place because of the length of time that had elapsed since the original application had been made. That is not good enough. The amendment seeks to put in place the words "a prescribed time of 60 working days from the date of receipt of the appeal" in which a decision should be made. That is an adequate amount of time in which it should be able to decide on an appeal. Paragraphs (b) and (c) seek to insert caveats to make sure an appeals officer would work within this time period. While the Minister has said there have been improvements, this is crucial. The example I have given shows the current provision is not good enough in that it took four months for an appeals officer to get back to say the appeal had lapsed. In that case, it had nothing to do with the appeal or the medical reasons advanced and the person concerned had to start from scratch again, which means that they are now in a worse position than they were five or eight months ago. I, therefore, propose that the amendment be accepted.