Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The backlogs are a matter of concern to me. That is why there has, as stated, been a lot of investment in additional appeals officers. A new IT system went live in November 2023. This facilitates an online capability to provide a more efficient and streamlined service for people who are making appeals. At end of 2024, a new update provided functionality on mywelfare.ie for people to make appeals. This new feature supports the end-to-end electronic processing of appeals and addresses some of the issues raised by the Deputy. It has reduced the administrative burden of validating and registering appeals. In addition to the appointment of new appeals officers at the end of 2024, this will begin to make a very big difference in the context of waiting times.

The new appeals regulations have been signed. They will also simplify the process and give more specified response times. The chief appeals officer has assured me that she is monitoring processing times and that they are making every effort to process appeals. However, the drive for the kind of efficiency that the Deputy and I agree on has to be balanced in order to ensure that decisions are consistent and of a high quality. We also endeavour to acknowledge that many people availing of the service do not have electronic capabilities, so we still rely on a lot of old-style communication to strike a balance to allow individuals to access the service in a manner that suits their specific circumstances.

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