Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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587. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if her attention has been drawn to the fact that new applications for carer's allowance are taking at least 17 weeks to process; her views as to whether this is an acceptable length of time to wait for such an application to be granted; if her attention has been further drawn to the hardship this waiting time is placing on persons who often have no source of income; if the case of a person (details supplied) will be examined; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [5555/18]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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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.

Before a decision can be made on entitlement to carer’s allowance, evidence must be provided in respect of the care recipient’s care requirement, the level of care the carer provides and the carer’s means. In general, social welfare schemes with a number of complex qualifying conditions can take longer to process. This is compounded if the documentary evidence provided at initial application stage is incomplete or insufficient; this is often the case with carer’s allowance applications.

At the end of December 2017, the average waiting time for new carer's allowance (CA) applications was 17 weeks with 5,284 CA applications awaiting decision. The volume of CA applications on hands is also a consequence of a continued increased intake of claims with the number of applications for CA in 2017 26% higher than in 2015.

Staff have been re-assigned within the carer’s allowance area to work on claims processing and it is expected that this will improve the processing times for this scheme over the coming weeks.

I confirm that my department received an application for CA from the person concerned on 4 January 2018.

The application is currently being processed and once completed, the person concerned will be notified directly of the outcome.

In the meantime, if the means of the person concerned are insufficient to meet her needs she should apply for a means-tested supplementary welfare allowance from her local community welfare service.

I hope this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.