Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)
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To ask the Minister for Social Protection the number of carer's allowance applications processed by her Department per month over the past six months; the number of applications received, granted and refused; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [46040/12]

Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)
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To ask the Minister for Social Protection her views on the fact that her Department are currently processing carer's allowance applications submitted in November 2011; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [46041/12]

Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)
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To ask the Minister for Social Protection the number of carer's allowance applications received in her Department for the six months preceding November 2011; and the number of applications received, granted and refused. [46042/12]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 342 to 344, inclusive, together.

Please find the information requested is the tables below. The first table outlines the number of carer’s allowance applications registered, decided, awarded, disallowed and refused for the past six months. The second table shows the same information for the six months preceding November 2011.

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 was completed 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 increase in the number of new claims processed was achieved in September, where claims processed substantially exceeded claim intake, and this increase continues into October. 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.