Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

The Deputy may not have been listening to the figures but there has been a reduction in the backlog left by Fianna Fáil. Perhaps there is a Fianna Fáil nua and we did not hear the announcement that Fianna Fáil went out of business completely. The Deputy is a member of the Fianna Fáil party and it has, unfortunately, bequeathed this massive backlog of appeals. We have begun to reduce that.

I am sure the Deputy will be pleased to hear that on Friday I signed the regulations which bring community welfare officers and the social welfare appeal system fully into the Department of Social Protection. We will now have an additional ten former HSE appeals officers integrated into the social welfare appeals office on foot of the changes. It will take time to deal with the backlog and, as I mentioned to the Deputy before, in the case of applications based on medical decision making, it is important that people have as complete an application as is possible at the original stage. We have discussed before how many people could help their position if there was more complete evidence at the time of the application.

We have also put more emphasis on deciding claims on a summary basis where possible, particularly if the medical evidence is clear and strong enough. That has brought down numbers but because of the massive unemployment which the Fianna Fáil Party bequeathed to the country, this is the unfortunate consequence of what Fianna Fáil did to the economy. It melted it and employment down and left us saddled with the bank guarantee. I take absolute responsibility to clear up the mess, and I am doing so while reforming the system. I assure the Deputy on the matter.

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