Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Department is committed to ensuring claims and appeals are processed as expeditiously as possible. There are 20 medical assessors, including the chief medical adviser and the deputy chief medical adviser, employed by the Department. Owing to the retirement of several medical assessors in recent years, several vacancies have arisen. In response, the Department, in conjunction with the Public Appointments Service, ran a competition in 2012 to recruit replacement and additional medical assessors. Four medical assessors appointed from that competition are employed, with a further medical assessor due to commence work this month.

The Department has continued to liaise with the Public Appointsment Service with a view to filling these critical vacancies. A further competition was advertised on 13 September inviting suitably qualified candidates to apply for the position of medical assessor in the Department. Interviews are due to take place shortly. This competition is one of several options the Department is exploring to increase its capacity to carry out medical assessments and reviews of its illness-disability-caring schemes, thus enabling it to deliver a quality service to its customers.

The Department's disability and illness-related schemes require a high level of medical evidence which must be assessed by the medical assessors and this, together with other qualifying criteria such as means-testing for disability allowance and carer's allowance and PRSI contributions for invalidity pension, can affect the processing times of claims. There has also been an increase in the volume of customer claims under particular schemes. Despite this, there have been significant improvements from 2012 in the waiting times for assessment by the medical assessors across all the illness related schemes. The processing backlogs have been eliminated across all of the illness related schemes, except for disability allowance, which is being cleared. Claims, appeals and urgent cases - medical-social reasons - are dealt with on a priority basis as a result of the updated IT systems we have put in place.

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The Department continually strives to standardise and simplify its application forms. However, the design and lay-out of application forms must also have regard to the particular requirements of individual schemes. Application forms are reviewed on a regular basis, including those parts that relate to the provision of medical evidence. The design of the medical sections of application forms is undertaken in consultation with the Department's chief medical adviser and deputy chief medical adviser.

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