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

I take on board the Deputy's comments. We report average times, but some cases take considerably longer to process. There are always reasons they take considerably longer. To his credit, the Deputy is one of the people who help with the most number of carer's allowance and disability allowance applications, but he will appreciate that in some cases where information is not readily available to us, processing of the applications can be delayed. I am genuinely heartened that our new front office/back office programme has provided for real efficiencies in how to turn around and utilise staff in every county and make t he best use our resources. When we added extra resources in the past few weeks because of the more efficient use of our staff, average waiting times reduced from 14 weeks to ten, which is really significant. We must ensure we get the processing time for carer's allowance applications to under 12 weeks, which is the stated objective. I would love to see us go even further as there are greater efficiencies from doing business online in order that we can bring down waiting times.

See this speech in context