Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

Receipt of carer's allowance is based on medical evidence. One of the difficulties with the system is that very often the initial application does not contain sufficient medical evidence of the quality required by deciding officers in the Department. There is scope to improve on this because when decisions on applications for carer's allowance are appealed, the successful appeal rate is over 50% which suggests the initial application submitted is often inadequate. There is something we can do in this regard. Shortly after becoming Minister, I appointed an extra nine appeals officers because I was conscious of how important this matter was. They will not just be deciding on appeals from carers, they will be working throughout the entire appeals structure. We are beginning to make progress in reducing the time taken to process appeals.

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