John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge that the tribunal is entirely independent but the review is important because, in the absence of the details and the knowledge of what is happening and making the payouts so slow, the Government is not in a position to know how to resource the tribunal adequately with personnel and funding. In 2015, for example, there were 217 applications, for which 159 payments were made. On the other hand, last year, only three years later, there were 174 applications but only 18 of them were resolved, while in 2017, payments were made in only 31 cases. All of a sudden a bottleneck has been hit, which is out of kilter with the previous years. Over all the years of the tribunal, significantly more applications than payments have been made. My understanding is there have been probably hundreds of cases in the system for years and years. The review needs to determine what steps can be taken but some of the cases need to be dealt with quickly because the applicants have waited a long time.

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