Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 29 November 2018

Public Accounts Committee

2017 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Social Protection
Chapter 11 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 12 - JobPath Employment Activation Service
Chapter 13 - Actuarial Review of Social Insurance Fund
Chapter 14 - Overpayments of Age-Related Jobseeker's Allowance
Chapter 20 - PRSI Contributions by the Self-Employed
2017 Social Insurance Fund

9:00 am

Photo of Peter BurkePeter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Obviously a substantial amount of responsibility for assessment for a carer's allowance is placed upon the GP. There is also the means test. I am concerned about both the carer's allowance and the disability allowance. I am dealing with a few cases at the moment. In one example, an individual who applied in October was told that it would be well into January before the application would be processed and a decision made on it. Carer's allowance affects people who are very vulnerable. Illness can come upon someone quite quickly and can be progressive. The delay in assessing claims can be very frustrating, especially when we are told that we are now at record levels of employment. A total of 2.3 million people are employed in this country. One would imagine that more resources would be available to the Department to reduce the lead times on such schemes, particularly when so many labour activation schemes have been outsourced. It frustrates me that we are not seeing more progress on these payments.

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