Seán Kyne (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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To ask the Minister for Social Protection if, in view of the significant increase in appeals of social welfare decisions, additional resources, including personnel, will be allocated to the Social Welfare Appeals Office in order that persons who are appealing decisions may receive a speedier response. [4034/13]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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By its nature and because it is a quasi-judicial process, the processing of appeals takes time even at the best of times and reflects the fact that while every effort is made to deal with appeals as fast as possible this cannot be at the expense of fairness of due process. Significant resources and efforts have been put into reducing backlogs and improving processing times for appellants, including the assignment of 15 additional Appeals Officers; improved business processes; a new operating model in the SWAO; increased capacity of the Medical Review and Assessment Service through the recruitment of 8 additional Medical Assessors in 2013.

All of these measures taken together have reduced the waiting times for appellants by 10.2 weeks in 2012 and will further reduce waiting times in 2013. The Chief Appeals Officer expects to finalise 6,000 more cases in 2013 than in 2012 (there were 33,129 appeals finalised in 2012). This will be achieved through the additional capacity generated as the newer Appeals Officers become experienced. The matter of assigning additional Appeals Officers is kept under constant review but any consideration of extra assignments must be taken in the context of overall government policy on civil service numbers.