John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister and I appreciate that he had to prioritise where staff work, what is processed and what is not.

Unfortunately, there is a massive backlog of more than 31,000 applications still to be dealt with. It is concerning that the Minister has not been able to give a date for the resumption of the processing of those applications. Essentially, he has given the same response I have received from him to parliamentary questions I have tabled in recent months. It is essentially the same response I received from him in June and in July and there is still no date for the processing of these applications to resume.

I understand that staff had to be pulled to work in other areas, such as the processing of the PUP, but now that there are no longer significant numbers of people dependent on such payments, surely staff should be back working on the processing of these applications. The failure to process them is having serious repercussions for people who need these registrations completed as quickly as possible.

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