Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Government acknowledges the crucial role that family carers play and is fully committed to supporting carers in that role. To support carers, I announced a number of measures in budget 2024. These include the €400 cost-of-living lump sum payment which will be paid in November, and the €12 increase in the maximum rate of the carers allowance and the carers benefit from January 2024, with proportionate increases for people getting a reduced weekly rate. From January 2024, there will also be a €10 increase to the domiciliary care allowance payment and weekly rates of qualified child payments will increase by €4 in January 2024, bringing them to €54 for those aged 12 and over and €46 for those aged under 12. There will be a €100 cost-of-living lump sum for people getting an increase for a qualified child; a Christmas bonus double payment to be paid in December; and a January cost-of-living bonus for people getting a weekly social welfare payment, to be paid in 2024. Furthermore, as a result of budget 2024, the weekly income disregard will increase from €350 to €450 for a single person, and from €750 to €900 for carers with a spouse or partner. Carer's allowance disregards continue to be the highest income disregards in the entire social welfare system.

My Department is committed to providing a quality service to all people and ensuring that applications and appeals are processed as quickly as possible. Carer's allowance applications are processed very efficiently. The current average time for a decision is six weeks, compared with an average of 14 weeks in 2019. The target of having 75% of new applications decided within ten weeks is consistently met, with almost 90% of applications meeting this target.

With an increased number of new applications received and decided over the last 12 months, there has been a corresponding increase in the volume of requests for reviews. Currently, the average time to process a review is five weeks. I assure the Deputy that the Department's medical assessors give thorough consideration to all conditions that require care, including those involving suicidal tenancies.

In any year, approximately 1% of decisions taken by the Department are appealed. The Department endeavours to ensure these cases are dealt with as quickly as possible. The average processing time for carer's allowance appeals is 16 weeks and this reflects the fact that people very often submit new and additional information with the appeal.

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