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

The Minister's angry tone at my questions indicates a certain defensiveness. My point about the jobseekers is the rate at which penalties are soaring, from 63 on JobPath in 2015 to 5,681 in 2018. I get my figures from the Minister's Department. The figure for 2017 for the number of disallowed carer's applications is 8,599. On appeal, 1,270 were allowed. That is quite high. It means that many people are initially refused and then forced to wait months for the appeal to come through. There are people sitting at home today who are still waiting for an answer. They are hurtling towards Christmas, suffering from financial hardship because of that. What action does the Minister plan to take to deal with the backlog of appeals and applications in the system? The answers the Minister gave in June to another Deputy were about trying to get more staff in, new targets that she was setting to be achieved and a redesigned application form. We are now in December and the Minister has failed to achieve those targets.

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