Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I can give the Deputy that assurance. In 2001, the disability payments bill was €1.1 billion, and that increased in 2011 to €2.7 billion. The number of people claiming in 2001 was 173,000 and that has grown to 242,000, or just shy of 250,000. The scheme is demand-led and is not capped. I spoke to the Deputy about this. We are seeking to improve the structure of the scheme to give a better service. As the Deputy and I have discussed on a number of occasions, there has been a big surge in applications. I can send the Deputy a summary of why people are unsuccessful in appeals. Very often, at the initial application stage, people's applications may be seriously incomplete. There may not be the quality medical evidence that is required to allow the medical assessor to stipulate that a person qualifies for a disability payment.

As the Deputy is aware, what happens then is that people submit a further application or an appeal - very often in multiples. Some people simply do not produce the paper work. We are working on projects to ensure that is improved over a period of time. As I said, we are computerising and scanning the applications so that if an application is incomplete, we can hold it. We do not have to recreate the entire application.

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