John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail)
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313. To ask the Minister for Social Protection the steps he is taking to reduce the processing time for applications for carer's allowance; his plans to reduce the target time of 12 weeks to process these applications; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [25957/17]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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Carer's Allowance (CA) is a means-tested social assistance payment, made to persons who are providing full-time care and attention to a person who has a disability such that they require that level of care.

This means that the care recipient requires from another person continual supervision and frequent assistance throughout the day in connection with normal bodily functions or continual supervision in order to avoid being a danger to him/herself and is likely to require such full-time care for at least 12 months.

My Department is committed to providing a quality service to all its customers. This includes ensuring that applications are processed and that decisions on entitlement are made as quickly as possible.

The current processing times for Carer’s Allowance (CA) applications is 12 weeks. Applications for CA in 2016 were 20% higher than in 2015.

Reducing these waiting times is a priority for my Department and we are working hard to make this happen. As part of its programme of service delivery modernisation, a range of initiatives aimed at streamlining the processing of claims, supported by modern technology, have been implemented by my Department in recent years. Operational processes, procedures and the organisation of work are continually reviewed to ensure that processing capability is maximised.

In addition, staffing needs are regularly reviewed, having regard to workloads and the competing demands arising, to ensure that the best use is made of all available resources. Where additional staffing is deployed to a scheme, there is a time-lag involved while those staff are trained and build up expertise. My Department has seen a significant reduction in CA processing from 22 weeks at the end of May 2016 to 12 weeks at the end of April 2017 and expects the processing times for the CA scheme to reduce further over the next few months, as recently assigned staff get up to speed with the work involved in claim processing.

I hope this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.