Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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To ask the Minister for Social Protection if she will provide in tabular form the shortest, longest and average waiting time yearly between 2006 and 2012 for disability allowance applications. [15696/13]

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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To ask the Minister for Social Protection the number of disability allowance applicants who are waiting over three months, six months, nine months and 12 months for their claims to be processed. [15697/13]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 178 and 179 together.

The DA backlogs are currently being eliminated, following the roll-out of a new service delivery modernisation system and a business process improvement initiative. The target is to have the backlog of disability allowance applications processed by the end of Quarter 2 2013. At present, there are approximately 6,700 applications for disability allowance still awaiting decision.

Of that 6,700, approximately 1,000 have already been processed and are awaiting some further information necessary in order to make a decision. Approximately 3,170 are waiting less than 3 months, 1,780 are waiting between 3 and 6 months, 1,480 are waiting between 6 and 9 months, 188 are waiting between 9 and 12 months and 74 are waiting in excess of 12 months. These figures should be seen in the context of an average annual new claims intake of approximately 24,000 and almost 6,000 claims decided since the beginning of 2013 alone. Statistics on average waiting times from 2006 to 2012 are in the table.

Average Waiting Times for Disability Allowance

*The figure for 2012 is an estimated figure as the DA scheme was transferred over to a new IT platform (SDM) as part of our modernisation project.