Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for his question. To begin with his first point about domiciliary care allowance, I answered a question about this a few days' ago, as the Deputy noted. I am happy to repeat to the House that the waiting period for domiciliary care allowance - the Deputy has the statistics in the answer to his question - has been reduced to six weeks following the reforms of the IT platform. That is a very significant development and I compliment the staff of the Department of Social Protection working in the context of significant changes introduced in the Department as a consequence of the Croke Park agreement. They have reformed the IT system. In the context of more applications for domiciliary care allowance and a change to what is called a new IT structure, the waiting period has been reduced to six weeks and the backlog has largely been addressed. I am delighted to tell the Deputy that current applications for domiciliary care allowance should now take about six weeks.

I previously explained to the Deputy that while the volumes, funding and the numbers being awarded domiciliary care allowance are increasing, certain applications are not complete when presented. Deputies know this in respect of different cases. The Deputy referred to people's medical experts. It is for people's family doctors and consultants if they are involved to make a case in clear medical terms and in line with the legislation as to why somebody qualifies for the allowance so that the medical assessors, who are medically qualified people working in my Department, can take account of the advice and opinion of the person's own medical advisers.

If the information is not forthcoming at the time of application, we allow fresh evidence to be submitted and if that is not satisfactory, people have a right of appeal. The improvements in information technology brought about by the staff in my Department have resulted in a six week waiting time. The backlog of family income supplement applications has been almost totally eliminated. We have made major improvements and, in a time of unprecedented economic difficulty, protected core rates of weekly social welfare payments and are providing additional funding under all of these headings.

Another factor affecting the number of applications is that in 2010 the then Fianna Fáil Government reduced the payment period of illness benefit from an indefinite period to two years. Deputies who deal with these cases will be aware that a consequence of this decision was an increase in the number of people coming forward because their two year period had expired and they were seeking to migrate to another payment. They also had a right, by and large, to return to jobseeker's allowance.

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