Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Fianna Fail)
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To ask the Minister for Social Protection if she intends to tackle the backlog of carer's allowance applications; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [57179/12]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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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.

A programme of backlog elimination is underway in carer’s allowance section where a number of measures have been implemented to improve processing times. Following the completion of a major 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 this is a significant increase in the number of new claims processed in recent months where claims processed have substantially exceeded claim intake. To achieve this improvement, significant additional temporary resources have been allocated to the backlog elimination effort and the situation continues to be managed and monitored to ensure that the backlog is eliminated in the shortest possible timeframe.