John Kelly (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister. I did not get an opportunity on the previous occasion she was in the House to speak on matters relating to social welfare and I am glad I have the opportunity to do so now. I was in the Mansion House today where the Free Legal Advice Centres, FLAC, introduced a proposal to reform the social welfare appeals system, which was launched by the Ombudsman, Ms Emily O'Reilly. It is looking for it to be independent of the social welfare staff who run it currently. I agree with much of what I heard. Presentations were also made by people from Northern Ireland where the appeals system is totally independent.

Our system is not transparent. If one applies for a social welfare payment, one does not know who is dealing with it. The deciding officer may not be the person who dealt with the case. One does not know the doctors dealing with it and, as I often say, doctors differ and patients die. There are many medical referees and they would all have varying opinions, but one does not have access to the file. If a person wants to appeal a decision of a deciding officer, he or she does not get access to the full file, something of which the Ombudsman, Ms Emily O'Reilly, was critical. She was also critical of some of the deciding officers' decisions. An interesting statistic was that where people got the benefit of an oral hearing, 49% of cases were overturned because people were able to present their cases. Social welfare application forms are very confusing for ordinary people to complete. Many of the 30 to 40 pages are nonsense and do not apply to them.

There was also a presentation by the chief appeals officer and, listening to her, it would seem there is no problem in the Department. There are problems and I know the Minister has been fundamental in bringing about a change in the scanning system in the Department, but there are historical cases which are just left there, as it were. I have been dealing with a case since last January and I do not know how many telephones calls I have made to the invalidity pension section. I telephoned it two weeks ago, said I was frustrated and that I needed someone to deal with the case. I happened to talk to a nice lady and it was like as if she had a box of files beside her. She told me to hold on for a second. She came straight back to me and said she had the file, that it had been there for a while and that she would get it sent on for a medical re-evaluation. I telephoned again today to find out at what stage the medical re-evaluation was. The girl said it had been sent on but that she did not know when it would be dealt with. I asked her to give me an indication as to whether it would be one month, two months, six months or a year. She said she had no idea. I am frustrated by what people must go through. I am going through it too because I am taking all the telephone calls on this. The Minister needs to talk to the chief appeals officer and to question this. I can give her examples of historical cases in respect of which nothing has happened for 12 to 14 months.

Rent caps were adjusted some time ago but it seems they were just slashed by 25% across the board. There was nothing scientific about the way the new rent caps were devised. In Roscommon town, where there is a shortage of houses, because it did not benefit from the tax incentive scheme and oceans of houses were not built with landlords crying out to rent them, the rent cap for a single person is ¤69 per week. If one heads south from Roscommon and in the direction of County Galway, one will come to a little village called Creggs on the Galway-Roscommon border. If one happens to live outside the village of Creggs in the middle of nowhere, the rent cap is ¤103 per week because it is in County Galway. We must look realistically at rent caps and at the likes of Roscommon town.

I refer to an issue which is not specific to the Minister but which I raised with the Minister for Health and other Ministers, namely, the proposed cuts to home help hours. I have made a proposal to the Minister for Health that he should consider opening it up to the community employment schemes to replace the hours proposed to be cut. At a minimum cost of ¤750,000, we could replace the necessary home help hours which are proposed to be cut.