Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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369. To ask the Minister for Social Protection her views on the delays in implementing decision of the Social Welfare Appeals Office; if she will provide figures including the average time that persons have had to wait to receive their payments including arrears in October 2011, October 2012 and October 2013 following a successful appeal; if she will confirm if the waiting time differs by scheme; and if so, if she will provide details of same. [49573/13]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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My Department aims to process and pay without delay all successful appeals returned by the Social Welfare Appeals Office (SWAO). In general, across schemes, there are no delays in implementing successful appeals.

However, in the disability allowance (DA) area, temporary delays are currently being experienced by some successful appellants. These delays are arising due to the large number of backlogged new claims that have been processed over the last year, resulting in high levels of appeals. There are approximately 1,700 DA cases awaiting payment at present following successful appeals. The majority of these have been received by the scheme area in the past 6 weeks. The Department regrets the inconvenience caused to these customers. Additional staff resources have been assigned to process these appeals and they will be put into payment quickly.

The average processing time for successful appeal cases cannot be provided as such statistics are not specifically captured across the various social welfare schemes. Statistics in relation to earlier years are not available but this situation is a result of the unique circumstance of major backlog clearance.