John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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67. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if illness benefit payments are now back at normal levels; if all fixes of the automated system have been put in place; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [53331/18]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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My Department transferred administration of the Illness Benefit scheme to its core IT platform in August 2018. Although the system change has worked effectively for over 80% of IB customers, significant difficulties arose following implementation for a number of customers.

My Department took three main steps to resolve the issues impacting on payments. First, deployed additional staff to process works and respond to the customer enquiries. Second, developed some new IT workarounds that address the payment gap issues and to ensure a faster flow-through to payments. Third, continue to review the design rules in the system to afford greater flexibility in processing of claims and certificates.

Payment levels are now maintained at the expected norm, (over 50,000 customers paid each week) for the past two months. People who are due a payment and whose certificates and claims are in order now receive their payment entitlement promptly. In stating this it is important to note that there are always cases, and were always such cases under the old system, where people's payments are legitimately stopped or paused for a variety of reasons.

In order to ensure that we learn from the lessons of this experience, I have arranged for an independent review into how the changes to IB were planned, implemented and – importantly – communicated to customers. I expect this work to be completed early in 2019.

Finally, I would like to sincerely apologise for the difficulties experienced by customers earlier this year and believe the action taken to address these have worked and we will continue to work to ensure customers receive a high standard of good service.

I hope this clarifies the matter for the Deputies.