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

In any year, approximately 85% of claims to the Department are awarded. The application process is relatively simple, albeit lengthy. Only 1% of people who apply make an appeal. This is a small number but the Department makes every effort to adjudicate on appeals as quickly as possible. Significant efforts and resources have been devoted to this process in recent years, as a result of which appeals processing times improved between 2011 and 2017, from 52 weeks for an oral hearing in 2012 to 26 weeks in 2017. It took 25 weeks for a summary decision in 2012 but 19 weeks in 2017. The processing times for 2018 were 30 weeks for an oral hearing and 24 weeks for a summary decision. There have been improvements in the first quarter of this year, following staff moves, and we are recruiting. There were, however, a number of retirements from our appeals section and we cannot expect new people to have the experience and knowledge of dealing with appeals that their predecessors had built up over many years. New staff need to train and build experience but by the end of this year we will have a fully operational, manned and womaned team and I expect the numbers to which the Deputy referred to come down.

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