John Kelly (Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is again welcome to the House. This debate was due to take place at 5 p.m. and because it was delayed for half an hour I am sure it has thrown the Minister's arrangements out of kilter, as it has mine. As I have a delegation to meet at 6 p.m., I will try to be as fast as possible.

I will and must support the Government amendment to the motion, although I agree with much of what Senator Zappone said. I was at the Mansion House the week before last when FLAC made its presentation. I was impressed by the presentation of Ms Emily O'Reilly. Much common sense was spoken. The main gist of what was sought was that we should establish an independent appeals system. I am not entirely sure this is the major problem. The first problem we have is the initial delay in dealing with claims. For example, I know a lady who went to a social welfare officer and asked whether she should apply for the carer's allowance, because she looked after her very sick child, or for the family income supplement, as her husband was working. The advice she got was to apply for the carer's allowance. Over 11 months she telephoned the office on 19 occasions to discover the status of her application and was told it was being dealt with. This was not the case. In the 11th month her application form was looked at for the first time and it was discovered that she was not getting a qualifying payment. The office wrote to her, telling her this and stating that she would not get the carer's allowance. If officers had looked at the file and told her that on the first day she could then have applied for the family income supplement. She lost out on social welfare payments for 11 months simply because the application was not dealt with. The first problem is the delay in dealing with applications.

The second problem, as highlighted by Ms Emily O'Reilly, is the decision-making on the part of deciding officers. Some 42% of these decisions end up with the appeals office. In House debates such as this I have always maintained that if 50% of appeals made to the appeals officer are overturned, the system is operating badly in the first instance. That is where the problem lies. If we could take away the 42% of all appeals that are unnecessarily brought to the appeals officer, there would not be as long a delay in getting those officers to deal with decision making. That is the nub of the problem.

I welcome the movement in the area of carers in that the backlog in the family income supplement section has been moved, as of last Monday, to Letterkenny to be dealt with by people who are less busy than they were, as they had been dealing with another scheme.

This week ten or 12 of the staff in Longford were moved from FIS to carer's allowance in order to deal with the backlog. I hope we will soon see signs of improvement as a result of this development.

The issue which arises in the context of the appeals system is that it is not possible to discover when an appeal is going to be dealt with. In recent days a man forwarded me a letter he was sent in respect of his appeal which states that due to the large increase in appeals received, some time will elapse before the appeals officer will be in a position to examine his case and that the Department will be in contact with him as soon as his case has been examined. The three greatest overall problems in respect of this matter are the delay in dealing with claims, the making of bad decisions by deciding officers and the fact that people do not have a clue when their appeals will be dealt with.

Senator Mac Conghail referred to the prioritisation of cases, and I completely agree with him in that regard. If there is a good reason for prioritising a case then it should be given priority. I recently rang the Department in respect of a woman who is terminally ill and inquired whether it would not be possible for her case to be dealt with as a matter of urgency. In fairness, the official to whom I spoke ensured that the case was dealt with immediately. I am of the view that there is further room for improvement in this regard and that priority cases should be dealt with as a matter of urgency. Senator Healy Eames stated that cases of destitution should be dealt with. Supplementary welfare allowance is designed to assist those who are destitute and, therefore, such situations should not arise.

If a person makes an appeal, he or she should be sent a full copy of his or her file by the Department. This would allow the person to see what has happened to his or her application during the entire process. Allowing people to have copies of their files might improve the standard of the decisions made by deciding officers in the first instance, particularly because it would be possible for applicants to discover, at some point in the future, the reasons for particular decisions and to read the comments of such officers.

I hope Senator Zappone will listen to the Minister and withdraw her motion. Perhaps there are matters in respect of which common ground might be established, particularly as we are all singing from the same hymn sheet. I apologise in advance to the Minister for the fact that I will be obliged to leave the House soon.