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

I thank the Deputy for raising this matter and for his kind comments about the staff of the Department.

The social welfare appeals office is an office of the Department of Social Protection which is responsible for determining appeals against decisions relating to social welfare entitlements. Appeals officers are independent in their decision-making functions. Significant efforts and resources have been devoted to reforming and streamlining the appeal process in recent years. A modernisation project is currently in progress to develop and implement a new appeals business process and IT system. The next phase of the system, which will be implemented in quarter 3 of 2024, will provide functionality on the MyWelfare platform for making appeals. This will provide a secure and comprehensive online appeals service for customers. It will improve the customer experience by offering an additional online channel that will facilitate 24-7 access to view current appeal status. It will also reduce the administrative overhead of validating and registering appeals.

The time taken to process appeals reflects the need to consider each decision in detail and, in many cases, to offer the appellant the opportunity to provide further information in addition to that submitted with their appeal. The chief appeals officer continues to monitor processing times and every effort is made to reduce the time taken to process an appeal. However, the drive for efficiency must be balanced with the competing demand to ensure decisions are consistent and of high quality and made in accordance with the provisions set out in primary legislation and regulations. Draft new regulations setting out the processes to be followed by the appeals office, including specific timelines for receipt and processing of appeals, have been prepared and discussed at the Oireachtas committee and issued for public consultation. These regulations are now being finalised and when implemented should enable a more efficient and transparent appeals office.

As of 31 May 2024 there was a total of 12,489 appeals registered and under consideration. Of these, a total of 5,174 are with the appeals office to be finalised with the remaining appeals under consideration by the relevant scheme area in the Department before submitting the file papers to the appeals office. The average processing time for an appeal was 16 weeks.

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