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

As the Deputy is aware, payment issues had arisen in the scheme last year when my Department transferred administration of the illness benefit scheme from an old legacy IT payments system to its core business IT platform.

Since then, my Department has been working hard to resolve these issues and to ensure that claims are processed and paid promptly.  We have made good progress in this regard, with payment levels maintained at the expected norm for the past couple of months. Thankfully, there is consistency in the payments. Telephone helpline and call handling performance has also been addressed and is now back to normal levels, although customers may still sometimes experience delays due to call volumes in particular weeks.

There has been an increase in claims for illness benefit in January. That reflects the annual increase at this time of year due to seasonal illnesses.  While over 9,000 transactions per day are processed, people who are due a payment and whose medical certificates and claims are in order, receive their payment entitlement promptly.  In stating this, there are always cases, and there were always cases, where people's payments are legitimately stopped, paused, or delayed for a variety of reasons, including the late submission of medical certificates or error on the part of people in the Department, the GPs or the applicants.

People who experienced an urgent financial need while awaiting an illness benefit payment were encouraged to apply to my Department's community welfare service to receive interim payments. They did that and we were able to look after most people relatively quickly. That avenue remains open to anyone who is adversely affected and the Department will respond sensitively to any case.  I am specifically referring to something the Deputy has brought to the attention of the House on a number of occasions. Some people incurred bank charges because of missed, delayed or no payments over a number of weeks or months. I encourage those people to apply to the local community welfare office to get those bank charges. Some people might say it is only a small amount of money but when people are living on illness benefit of €198 per week, bank charges of €15 or €30, which were imposed on them for something that had nothing to do with them in the first place, are not sustainable. People should make applications to the community welfare officer, CWO, and we will look after each case sensitively.

See this speech in context