Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Notwithstanding the difficulty in the length of time for processing an initial claim and then for a claim to go from review to appeal or from appeal to the deciding officer, it is genuinely unexplainable and unacceptable that when an appeal is made and the deciding officer decides in the positive for the carer, a carer would have to wait as long as the Deputy's constituent has. I am not justifying the delay in any way, shape or form, but applications or appeals go back to departments and are put on a pile with other applications and are dealt with chronologically. When a person's application is deemed successful, however, we should find a different way of doing it. I will certainly make it our intention to look at that in January.

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