Written answers
Tuesday, 13 March 2012
Department of Social Protection
Social Welfare Benefits
8:00 pm
Barry Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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Question 303: To ask the Minister for Social Protection the total number of applications for social welfare currently outstanding in the system, broken down by programme; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [14238/12]
Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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The number of claims pending a decision on their eligibility at January 31st 2012 was 104,711 compared to a total of 118,682 at the same date in 2011. This is a reduction of almost 14,000 or more than 11% in claims pending a decision over the twelve month period. About half of the total reduction is in the areas of Jobseeker's Benefit and Jobseeker's Allowance.
| Scheme | Claims Pending 31/01/2011 | Claims Pending 31/01/2012 | Percentage Claims Pending Change during Year |
| Jobseeker's Benefit | 11,289 | 8,684 | -23.1% |
| Jobseeker's Allowance | 27,188 | 22,640 | -16.7% |
| One-Parent Family Payment | 5,179 | 4,028 | -22.2% |
| State Pension Contributory (Dom) | 2,832 | 3,257 | 15.0% |
| State Pension Transition (Dom) | 1,953 | 2,373 | 21.5% |
| Widow(er)'s Contributory Pension | 519 | 454 | -12.5% |
| Guardian Payment (Contributory) | 119 | 122 | 2.5% |
| Widowed Parent Grant | 0 | 33 | - |
| Unique Allowances | 524 | 363 | -30.7% |
| State Pension Non-Contributory | 1,541 | 1,993 | 29.3% |
| Blind Person Pension | 47 | 52 | 10.6% |
| Guardian Payment (Non Contributory) | 80 | 66 | -17.5% |
| Widow(ers) Non Contributory Pension | 125 | 94 | -24.8% |
| Household Benefits | 4,238 | 2,443 | -42.4% |
| Free Travel | 37 | 36 | -2.7% |
| Bereavement Grant | 929 | 988 | 6.4% |
| Domiciliary Care Allowance | 471 | 331 | -29.7% |
| Supplementary Welfare Allowance | 5,462 | 6,219 | 13.9% |
| Child Benefit (Domestic & FRA) | 3,872 | n/avail | - |
| Child Benefit (EU Regulation) | 2,955 | 2,301 | -22.1% |
| Treatment Benefit | 10,008 | 3,834 | -61.7% |
| Maternity Benefit | 3,412 | 3,730 | 9.3% |
| Family Income Supplement (New) | 5,567 | 6,662 | 19.7% |
| Family Income Supplement (Renew) | 1,696 | 4,469 | 163.5% |
| Carer's Allowance | 3,747 | 7,552 | 101.5% |
| Carer's Benefit | 378 | 420 | 11.1% |
| Disability Allowance | 6,346 | 7,403 | 16.7% |
| Disablement | 1,994 | 1,961 | -1.7% |
| Invalidity Pension | 2,117 | 6,790 | 220.7% |
| Bereavement Grant | 541 | 204 | -62.3% |
| Illness Benefit | 12,969 | 4,791 | -63.1% |
| Interim Illness Benefit (OIB) | 316 | 154 | -51.3% |
| Respite Care Grant | 231 | 264 | 14.3% |
| One-Parent Family Payment - HQ | N/avail | 234 | - |
| 118,682 | 104,711 | -11.8% |
Seán Kyne (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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Question 305: To ask the Minister for Social Protection the measures being taken to alleviate the delays in the scanning of medical evidence pertaining to carer's allowance applications, which, according to her Department's officials, is the reason for the delay in the assessment of the applications. [14263/12]
Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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The Department is committed to delivering the best possible service to its customers. In order to meet the challenge of increased volumes of new claims for its schemes, the department has embarked on a major programme of process redesign and modernisation, including the deployment of new computer systems. The deployment of new systems is a very resource intensive task and has, as a consequence, had a negative impact during the development and deployment phase on processing performance. Once the programme of deployment is fully completed I expect that performance will recover and improve.
As part of my department's Document, Record and Information Management (DRIM) programme and in tandem with Service Delivery Modernisation (SDM) projects underway for carer's allowance scheme, scanning of medical documents for a number of schemes including carer's allowance commenced in 2010. At the end of August 2011 scanning was extended to include carer's allowance application forms and associated documentation.
The DRIM programme is a key part of my department's ongoing change and modernisation programme. The rationale for the programme is to reduce the volume of paper documents used and stored in scheme areas by scanning documents, making the scanned images available online to staff and where appropriate, extracting data from scanned images for integration to ICT systems to facilitate automation of business processes. In order to address the high claim load and reduce the time taken to process claims resources in the carer's allowance area are being prioritised as far as possible to the reduction of the back logs. Additional resources are also being provided in the form of overtime working and temporary staff. However, it is expected to be a significant number of months before the backlog is reduced to an acceptable level.
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