Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

In 2010, the average time it took to award a claim for carer's allowance was eight weeks. Some 18,212 applications for carer's allowance were made and some 16,629 claims were processed in that year. The main reason for the deterioration in the processing time is that major modernisation work is ongoing. That work will be completed and the new system will be started by July of this year. My experience of the Department of Social Protection is that investment in the modernisation of information technology facilities achieves results such as improvements in processing times.

The Deputy asked about levels of refusal. Some 16,574 new claims were received in 2009. Some 5,776 claims were refused in that year. That represented a refusal rate of 34.8%. As I said, some 18,212 new claims were made in 2010 and 6,972 were refused. That represented a refusal rate of 38.2%.

One of the reasons for delays in processing all social welfare applications, including for carer's allowance, is the provision of insufficient or inaccurate information. As the Deputy noted, owing to changing circumstances people often make applications while under pressure and it may take time to obtain all the relevant information and present it properly. I am optimistic that when the new system is operational, we will be able to achieve the previous processing times and perhaps improve on them. The process would be facilitated if people had more complete information when they made an application.

See this speech in context