Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

We have already appointed two extra appeals officers. I will work towards a position where in the normal way appeals officers will be promoted from within the system, and we have a sufficient number of trained appeals officers to deal with the backlog. There is much work to be done on the way the appeals system operates as some are more complicated than others. There must be a fast-track system for the black and white appeals, allowing us to go through to the oral hearings for more complicated examples.

I will work on the issue and we can discuss it in further detail on Committee Stage. We must try to ensure that within Department resources of full-time public servants, we can keep the number of appeals at an acceptable level and deal with appeals expeditiously. In the context of where we are with the phenomenal growth in the number of appeals, it would take too long to train people and have people waiting in the meantime. People are entitled to a certain service.

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