Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Deputies across this House will tell the Minister of numerous constituents who have been waiting for months for a decision on an appeal.

Other Deputies and I can tell the Minister of numerous clients who wait for months for decisions on appeals. The high level of initial refusals that are then forced to go into appeal is interesting. It is also interesting that the Department never informed people in writing that they can have a review of their case. It informed them that they have 21 days to appeal and there is a high level of appeals because there is a huge number of initial refusals. The initial wait to have the application either accepted or refused is well out of kilter with the desired target. It could be up to 16 or 17 weeks and there is the same wait again on appeal. People wait for months for their carers to be approved. It is ironic that this is for a cohort of people who are saving the State billions of euro by doing that care work at home. We discussed this already. Another cohort of people in the appeals process are those I referred to earlier. The number penalised on JobPath in 2016 was 63 and it soared in 2018 to 5,681. They are penalised and then they appeal. It is not the other way around. There is a problem with backlogs of appeal.

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