Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independent)
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25. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the steps she has taken or is planning to take to accelerate the payment process for the working family payment (details supplied). [15599/19]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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Working Family Payment (WFP) is an in-work payment which provides additional income support to employees on low earnings with children.  WFP is payable for a 52 week period from award date and a person must reapply at the end of this period to have their payment renewed.

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 in a timely fashion.

The average waiting time for processing new WFP applications is currently 7 weeks.

All possible steps are being taken to improve processing times in this area.  All available staff are assigned to claims processing to ensure that new applications are dealt with as quickly as possible.  As a consequence of the above measures, it is expected that WFP new application processing times will continue to improve in the coming weeks.

WFP renewal forms are issued to customers 8 weeks before the expiry of the 52 week period and these applications are generally processed in advance of the expiry date.