John Perry (Sligo-North Leitrim, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I shall respond to this Adjournment on behalf of my colleague, the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Joan Burton. She welcomes the opportunity to outline to the Seanad the steps that are being taken to improve the processing of disability allowance applications and the significant improvements made over the past 12 months in the processing of applications for other departmental schemes such as family income supplement, invalidity pension and carer's allowance.

The processing time for individual social welfare claims may vary in accordance with their relative complexity in terms of the relevant qualifying criteria, people's circumstances and the information they provide in support of their claim. In addition, a request for a review or an appeal by a person adds to the length of time taken to deal with the claim.

A major service delivery modernisation project was undertaken to improve the efficiency of administration of a number of social welfare schemes, including disability allowance, and to help deal with substantial backlogs in Longford schemes. This involved the deployment of information technology solutions and associated business process improvement.

The current average time to decide a new disability allowance application is seven weeks. Following completion of the IT phase of the modernisation project in the area, the disability allowance section commenced its business process improvement project in December 2012, at which stage there were 7,800 claims awaiting decision. The backlog elimination plan was implemented at the end of April 2013. All of the backlogged new claims awaiting a decision prior to 29 April 2013 were ring-fenced and additional staff, operating a new streamlined process, were assigned to decide these claims. The backlog of unactioned claims is presently reduced to just over 2,900 and the target is to have all these actioned within the next few weeks. New disability allowance applications received from 1 May 2013 onwards are actioned without undue delay.

Previously, following the roll-out of the IT phase of service delivery modernisation projects, similar business process improvement projects were completed in invalidity pensions, carer's allowance and also in family income supplement. The Minister is delighted to say that these projects have resulted in the elimination of backlogs of new claims in invalidity pensions and carer's allowance. They have also eliminated backlogs of both new and renewal claims in family income supplement. For instance, the current average time taken to decide a new invalidity pension claim is six weeks; carer's allowance is now eight weeks; family income supplement is less than two weeks for new claims and in advance for renewals so that a customer with an ongoing entitlement to family income supplement is not left without payment.

As a consequence of the very high number of decisions made in the past year in all the relevant schemes, and as backlogs were being eliminated, there has been a corresponding substantial increase in the number of appeals being received. Invalidity pensions, carer's allowance and family income supplement sections are now focused on reducing the appeals on hand. The prompt processing of claims is the priority for all scheme managers. Each scheme area is continuously monitoring its processes, procedures and the organisation of work to ensure that processing capability is maximised.

In conclusion, the Minister wishes to assure Senators that service delivery remains a key priority in her Department and that processes are kept under continuous review to ensure that services are delivered promptly to customers.