Fiona O'Loughlin (Kildare South, Fianna Fail)
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587. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the length of time a social welfare inspector can stop payments to a person in receipt of a payment while they investigate a situation. [49359/18]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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A social welfare inspector does not stop payments to a person in receipt of a payment while they investigate a situation. A Deciding Officer may suspend a payment to a person in certain circumstances.

Payments to customers are not suspended unless there is a valid reason for doing so, for example, failure to sign, no reply from the customer to a request for information or insufficient information supplied by the customer in order to progress a claim review or investigation. Claims may be suspended temporarily pending customer investigation. In situations where the customer does not engage with my Department they are advised that their claim will be closed within 14 days.

In cases where there is ongoing co-operation between the customer and the Inspector and/or the Deciding Officer cases can be reviewed without recourse to payment suspension.

Staff in the Department are engaged with customers throughout the entire lifecycle of their claim, including the undertaking of regular reviews for all schemes on an ongoing basis. A person’s entitlement to a social welfare payment is reviewed on a continuing basis to ensure that the conditions of the scheme are satisfied. Reviews vary from desk assessments, home visits, written and verbal enquiries, and face to face interviews with customers at the counter, depending on the nature of the review or investigation.

Decisions following a review or investigation are given to customers in a timely fashion once all the information requested is made available to staff in my Department to enable them to complete their investigation.

I trust that this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.