Mr. John McKeon:

At present, the average time to process an appeal is about 16 weeks. It does not vary that much anymore. It is 16 weeks on average and about 23 or 24 weeks for an oral hearing and about 16 weeks for a summary hearing. We are proposing to make a number of changes to how the appeals office works, which we have consulted on. I think we spoke about them briefly here last year and certainly at the social protection committee they were spoken about in detail.

The way the current system works - and it was not intended or legislated for to be set up that way - is that it has almost become an adversarial-type system where the appeals office gets an appeals submission. The appeals offices writes to the Department and the Department puts forward, in effect, a defence, and then the appeals office has to adjudicate between them. We want to move back to what was the de novoprinciple. This means that when the appeals office gets an appeal it will be considered as if it is being looked at for the first time. It asks if the person qualifies or not and it does not really matter - I am exaggerating to make the point - what the Department thinks. Looking at this decision afresh, with all the evidence in front of the appeals officer as to whether the person qualifies or not is where we are trying to get to. People will still need to refer to the Department and they will need to get information from the Department. At present, there is no obligation on the Department to respond within a certain amount of time.