Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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Question 416: To ask the Minister for Social and Family Affairs if her attention has been drawn to the length of delay involved in processing applications to switch to invalidity pensions; if there are plans to review this process; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [4305/09]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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The 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 expeditiously as possible. The staff and other resources available to the Department are regularly reviewed having regard to the workload arising and other competing demands.

Applicants for invalidity pension do not automatically switch from another social welfare payment. The processing of these applications involves medical assessment, verification of domestic and EU social insurance contributions and other criteria, all of which add to the processing time required to ensure that the terms of the scheme are correctly administered. In addition, time can elapse where applicants do not attend for medical assessments or do not supply all the necessary information in support of their claim.

The Department received 7,757 invalidity pension applications in 2008 and 7,596 were decided in the year. The average time to decide an invalidity pension award was 11 weeks. A review of existing processes and procedures for invalidity pension is currently underway with the explicit objective of improving efficiency in claim processing.