Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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2652. To ask the Minister for Health if his attention was drawn to processing times to have qualifications recognised and register with CORU for social workers who qualified in Northern Ireland that want to apply for vacant positions here; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [38659/21]

Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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2653. To ask the Minister for Health the processing timeframes for recognition of qualifications and registering with CORU for social workers in each of the years 2018 to 2020 and to date in 2021 in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [38660/21]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 2652 and 2653 together.

CORU has provided data in tabular form on the processing times for the recognition of social work qualifications. The data includes all applications for the recognition of social work qualifications and applicants who qualified in Northern Ireland.

CORU is unable to provide data on the number of applicants with recognised Northern Irish qualifications who subsequently registered with CORU. However, the average processing time for the social work registration applications has been provided.

During the period 2016 to 2020 the average period required to make a decision on recognising professional qualifications in social work was 84 days. The variance in the average number of days required to process an application during this period is a reflection of process changes, the volume of applications and the diversity of qualifications that applicants sought to have recognised. A decrease in the processing period has been recorded; in 2020 the average had decreased to 75 days, from 82 in 2019 and 97 in 2018.

The average processing time for the registration of social work applicants has improved from 81 days in 2020 to 54 days in 2021. CORU has also informed the Department that the registration time is typically shorter than that presented in the data because the current system cannot ascertain when a completed application was submitted, only when the process started online, with the result that delays by an applicant in submitting all their documentation can negatively skew the dataset.

Table 1: Social Worker Recognition Applications: Number of Days to Process

Table 2: Average Registration Processing time in days for Social Workers Applications

I met with the Chairperson and CEO of CORU earlier this year and raised the issue of timeframes for recognition of qualifications and registration. Following our discussion, a variety of measures have been initiated by CORU aimed at further reducing timeframes.