Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Department. It is fair to say the Department is not, by and large, one of the public bodies that has very significant problems with processing times, at least at present. There are some issues. I submitted a parliamentary question relatively recently on waiting times and it seems that of the centrally-processed schemes, the big outlier is probably disability allowance, for which the wait time is about ten weeks. I am not sure whether that can be worked down, but many of the wait times are in the region of four to seven weeks, as far as I can see from the statistics in front of me.

Probably the big one that stands out for me is not the centrally processed ones but supplementary welfare. The briefing note the witnesses sent us said that in relation to the supplementary payments programme area, which I presume is supplementary welfare, output targets were substantially achieved while key impact targets disimproved between 2021 and 2022. What is the difference between output targets and impact targets?

I was just checking this out a bit and I came across a case we were dealing with. I think they applied for funeral expenses in mid-March and only got the payment in June. Obviously, that is a substantial enough delay. We have probably come across other cases like that. It is a bit more complicated but it would seem to me that there are some delays in the supplementary welfare programme.

I had the opportunity to discuss this with the Department recently but I forgot to bring up this particular element of it. A lot of the work of supplementary welfare allowance seems to be handled by people at the rank of executive officer rather than higher executive officer, HEO, and who perhaps have less discretion to make decisions.

I have one further question but perhaps the witnesses can respond to the question on supplementary welfare.