Niamh Smyth (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

498. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the waiting times for the processing of applications for carer’s allowance and carer's benefit; the number of applications waiting at present per county in tabular form; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [6717/21]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

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

There are no delays in processing claims once the necessary information is provided. In January 2021 the average number of weeks to award new Carer's Allowance applications was 5 weeks and 4 weeks for new Carer's Benefit applications.

Significant improvements have been achieved in reducing the average time to process claims. In 2020 the average number of weeks to award a new Carer's Allowance claim was 7 weeks and 5 weeks for Carer's Benefit, reduced from 14 weeks for Carer's Allowance and 12 weeks for Carer's Benefit in 2019.

Claim processing is kept under active review. The target for the Carer's Allowance scheme is to process 75% of claims in 11 weeks. The average processing time for Carer's Allowance at the end of January 2021 was 5 weeks and 95% of claims were processed within 11 weeks.

The current number of applications pending for these schemes are as follows.