Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail)
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The next item also deals with the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection. We were concerned about delays in dealing with any payments that required a medical assessment, such as disability or invalidity benefit, in that there is a lack of doctors and there is always a delay on the medical side. We made the recommendation to examine the possibility of contracting nurses to carry out medical assessments more promptly. The Department fully accepts the recommendation and states:

Overall, the numbers of medical opinions provided have been maintained over the two years - 2017 and 2018- at 87,908 and 87,603 respectively. Currently the numbers awaiting a medical opinion at claim stage are below 1,000, [which seems quite low] with an average waiting time of less than 2 weeks for most schemes, 3 weeks for Domiciliary Care Allowance and 4 weeks for Disability Allowance.

Following the recent recruitment competition for medical assessors, seven candidates have been successfully placed on a panel and the first placements commenced in early March 2019.

The Department is currently considering the option of employing registered clinical nurse practitioners [as part of this process].

It also points out these applications can be held up because of means tests but we were concentrating on the medical side. The Department seems to have acknowledged there was an inordinate delay. It has recruited the staff since March of this year.