Finian McGrath (Dublin Bay North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for asking this important question.

The Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection is committed to providing a quality service for all of its customers and their families. This includes ensuring applications are processed and that decisions on entitlement are made as quickly as possible. Before a decision can be made on entitlement to carer’s allowance, evidence must be provided of the care recipient’s care requirements, the level of care the carer provides and the carer’s means. In general, applications under social welfare schemes with a number of complex qualifying conditions can take longer to process. This is compounded if the documentary evidence provided at the initial application stage is incomplete or insufficient. This is often the case in the case of carer’s allowance applications.

At the end of 2017 the average waiting time in processing new carer’s allowance applications was 17 weeks, with 5,284 applications awaiting decision. The number of carer's allowance applications in hand is also a consequence of the continued increased intake of claims, with the number of applications in 2017 being 26% higher than in 2015. Therefore, the second reason is the huge increase in the number of applications received.

Staff have been reassigned within the carer’s allowance area to work on claims processing and it is expected that this will improve processing times under the scheme in the coming weeks. A redesigned application form will be published shortly. The new form will allow carers to provide more information on the type and level of care they provide, with the aim of providing deciding officers with the information they need to expedite decisions on entitlement. We are, therefore, also hoping the new redesigned application form will speed up the process.

The Department experienced delays in the processing of domiciliary care allowance claims during 2017 owing to a number of factors. First, there was a significant increase in the number of applications being received. The year-on-year increase in recent years has consistently been in the 15% to 20% range. Second, following a High Court ruling in 2016, there is a need for the Department’s medical officer and deciding officer to provide more detailed reasons for their decision when communicating it to the customer. Corrective actions were taken by the Department, including the allocation of additional resources. The time required to finalise domiciliary care allowance claims has returned to the departmental standard, with claims being processed within 12 weeks on average during December 2017. At the end of December, there were 1,240 domiciliary care allowance claims awaiting processing, representing a claims intake of just over two months.

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