Jack Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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Question 85: To ask the Minister for Social and Family Affairs the steps she is taking to improve her Department's application processing times and overall customer service performance; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [18618/08]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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My Department is committed to providing a quality service to all its customers. This includes ensuring that applications are processed and that decisions on entitlement are made as quickly as possible. The staff and other resources available to the Department are regularly reviewed having regard to the workload arising and other competing demands. The available resources are then deployed to discharge the Department's obligations towards its customers and in implementing cost effective controls to prevent and detect fraud and abuse.

The processing of applications under any of the schemes operated by the Department can require the collection and assessment of a complex range of information in relation to a variety of factors including means, medical condition, domestic and EU contributions and other criteria. This can involve medical assessments by the Department's medical assessors of applicants; the verification of information provided through home visits by social welfare inspectors, correspondence and evidence from other EU jurisdictions, all of which add to the processing time required to ensure that the terms of the scheme are correctly administered. In addition the timescales in processing applications for some of the Department's schemes have been influenced by increases in the numbers of claims being submitted.

Measures introduced by the Department to address the efficiency of claim processing include the following:

Review of existing processes and procedures on an ongoing basis with the explicit objective of reducing delays in claim processing;

Prioritising claim renewals to ensure continuity of payments;

Review of ongoing staffing requirements in light of the increased volumes of claims in certain areas;

The judicious application of overtime working;

Recruitment of temporary staff where appropriate, to reduce or eliminate the backlogs;

Introduction of scanning technology in certain areas, to update details directly from claim forms to computer systems, will enable further streamlining of claim processing.

These measures will, over time, lead to more efficient processing and reduce the number of claims on hand. The position is being closely monitored and kept under review by my Department.