Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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To ask the Minister for Social Protection when a person (details supplied) will be paid carer's allowance. [44524/12]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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I confirm that the department received an application for carer’s allowance from the person in question on the 7th July 2011. The application is currently with a social welfare investigative officer for means assessment and confirmation that all the conditions for receipt of carer’s allowance are satisfied. It will be processed as quickly as possible and the person concerned will be notified directly of the outcome. If the application is successful, arrears will be backdated to the date of receipt of the application.

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. A noted improvement was achieved in September where claims process substantially exceed claim intake. 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.