Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North-Central, Fianna Fail)
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80. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection to advise on the efforts underway in his Department to decrease social welfare appeal waiting times; the average time it takes an appeal to be decided on; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [61989/25]

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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I thank Deputy O'Sullivan and I acknowledge his ongoing engagement on this issue. In 2024, the Department's deciding officers and designated persons made almost 3.4 million appealable decisions. Of these, 174,000 claims were disallowed or rejected, representing 5% of all decisions, and 40,684 appeals were registered. This represents just over 1% of the overall total decisions. At current registration levels, it is projected we will again exceed 40,000 appeals by the end of 2025. This contrasts with appeal volumes of just over 20,000 in previous years.

The increase in appeal volumes is believed to be attributable to two factors. These are demographic factors leading to higher demand for pensions, disability and carer's payments, and the introduction of a simple-to-use online appeals process. Recognising that neither of these two factors is likely to change, the chief appeals officer has put in place measures to deal with the increase in appeals registered. Twenty additional appeals officers were assigned in 2025. Considerable progress has since been made, with 44,307 appeals finalised by the end of October 2025. This is a 96% increase in productivity on the 22,610 appeals dealt with by the end of October 2024. As a result, pending appeals volumes have been more than halved from over 22,000 in January this year to about 11,000 currently. They are continuing to fall and I continue to monitor them on a monthly basis.

Inevitably, reported processing times increase as the office clears the backlog. However, the average time to process an appeal at the end of quarter 3 of 2025 was 21.2 weeks, which is lower than the average of 23.5 weeks for 2024. Processing times are continuing to fall and once the backlog is reduced, I expect they will fall back to between ten and 12 weeks, which, given the complexity of the issues the appeals office deals with, is a reasonable timeframe.

Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North-Central, Fianna Fail)
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I have tabled parliamentary questions in the past, and I have always said that in terms of dealing with day-to-day stuff from TDs, the Department of Social Protection is probably one of the most efficient Departments and I want to put this on the record. Nonetheless, I have asked this parliamentary question on a number of occasions, as have a number of other Deputies in the past while. The Minister's answer is similar to previous responses about the 20 additional appeals officers put in place.

Are they 20 permanent staff who have been reassigned or is that just temporary? If it is temporary, when does that reassignment cease? It is inevitable that there will be waiting times and backlogs but is there any kind of prediction as to when we will get back within that 12-week period? I know I can cherry-pick certain welfare appeal processes, but the one that always sticks with me is the supplementary welfare allowance. That can take in excess of a year. I am particularly interested in hearing whether there has been a reduction in the waiting time for that.

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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They are 20 permanent staff for the appeals office. You do not just drop somebody into an appeals office. They need training and experience and there is a process in place within the appeals office to do that. It would have taken time for those 20 to be trained up and get stuck in but they are definitely getting stuck in. I also point out that we introduced new social welfare appeals regulations from 28 April. One of the key changes under those regulations is that the time limit to lodge an appeal has increased from 21 to 60 days. A lot more appeals are coming in as a consequence of that. There is also provision for the chief appeals officer to accept late appeals of up to 180 days in certain circumstances.

The chief appeals officer continues to monitor the appeals on hand and the appeal processing times. I continue to monitor that work in terms of ensuring we get the appeals back as efficiently as possible. There is always a balance between processing appeals and dealing with them. I want to try to make sure we get to a good balance with that and there is no particular scheme that is an outlier. That is why, this year, I have focused predominantly on domiciliary care allowance appeals. We have it down to a situation that I referred to in reply to the previous question.

Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North-Central, Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the Minister's statement about the domiciliary allowance in reply to the previous question. Specifically, could he address the supplementary welfare appeals in his answer if he has a moment?

In relation to processing times, I am not trying to be unfair or harsh, but I look at the response that the chief appeals officer continues to monitor the number of appeals on hand and that appeal processing times take extra effort to ensure decisions are consistent and timely and I just wonder what the definition of "timely" is in the Department. Somebody who is in dire need of this payment - some more than others - does not have the facility to wait what is often 20, 25 or 30 weeks. Is there any kind of guide as to what people need to be aiming for or are there any targets the Minister could share with us this morning?

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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Every appeal is different and every scheme is different. Given the complexity of some of the schemes, getting to a ten-week turnaround time would be good for some of the schemes. I will revert to the Deputy, as I do not have the detail about supplementary welfare appeals.

Appeals will also depend on the detail provided. It is not always easy to get the level of detail we need to do an appeal. At the end of quarter 3, the average processing time for all social welfare appeals was 21.2 weeks. I want to get that down. That is why we have made changes, such as assigning the 20 extra people. We have an appeals modernisation project. That was completed in quarter 1 2025, which brings in the online side of things and enhances the experience.

I continue to work with the chief appeals officer, who has put in huge effort, along with the appeals office generally, to try to get these backlogs reduced. Up to the end of quarter 3, we had 29,751 appeals registered. We have reduced the processing times for those appeals. While the volume continues to grow, I want to focus on reducing the processing times as much as we can.