John O'Mahony (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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To ask the Minister for Social Protection the number of applications received each month for the years 2011 and to date in 2012 for carer's allowance; the number of applications on hand waiting to be processed; the reason for the delay in processing these applications; the steps that are being taken to reduce the waiting times; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [41681/12]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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Numbers of Carer's Allowance Applications received 2011 and 2012 (to date) are outlined in the following tables:

2011 - Number of Carer's Allowance Applications registered by month

Total Number of Carer's Allowance applications registered: 12459

2012 - Number of Carer;s Allowance Applications registered by month

Rotal Number of Carer's Allowance applications registered: 11202

The total amount of pending carer's allowance applications as of August 2012 is 10,137.

I acknowledge that the time taken to process carer’s allowance claims at present is not satisfactory but I am satisfied that the Department is taking appropriate action to resolve the situation.

Carer’s allowance section has recently completed a major service delivery modernisation project to improve the efficiency with which it processes applications from clients for carer’s allowance. The project involved the development of IT functionality and associated business process re-organisation. Full deployment of the new system for Carer’s Allowance was completed in June 2012.

Following the completion of the modernisation project, an in-depth business process improvement (BPI) project commenced for the carer’s allowance scheme. This project focused on optimising output and customer service and the reduction of backlogs. The outcome of the review is the division of work into two streams. One concentrates on dealing with new claim intake and processes these without delay and the other on the backlog which is ring-fenced with a clear and targeted plan for its elimination. Implementation of the plan commenced on Monday 3 September and will be closely monitored and managed to ensure it achieves its objectives. However, it will take a number of months before the backlog is reduced to an acceptable level. The allocation of available resources to this task continues to be monitored.