Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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841. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if she will provide specific figures on the average processing times for applications for additional needs payments by month from June 2022 to date, in tabular form; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [63273/22]

Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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842. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if she will provide specific figures on the number of additional needs payment applications which have taken longer than four weeks to finalise in each of the months from June 2022 to date; if she will provide figures regarding the following timeframes; 5-8 weeks to process; 9-12 weeks to process, and more than 12 weeks to process in tabular form; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [63274/22]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 841 and 842 together.

The Community Welfare Service (CWS) is committed to providing a quality service to all citizens, ensuring that applications are processed and that decisions on entitlement are made as quickly as possible.

Where it is clear that a person has an urgent or immediate need, every effort is made to ensure that the claim is processed on the same day.  Community Welfare Officers are very experienced and can generally assess when a case is so urgent that it requires an immediate response.  Approximately 10% of CWS payments to customers across the country are made on this basis, which shows just how responsive the service is to an urgent customer need.

The majority of applications are finalised within two weeks of receipt of  a completed application form and the necessary documentation.

Unfortunately, the level of detail requested by the Deputy is not available. 

As of 12/1/23, there were just under 7,000 ANP applications being processed - this reflects less than 2 weeks work on hands. I expect this number to reduce further in the coming weeks with the assistance of the additional resources that I secured.

In addition, the number of applications for ANPs has slowed in recent weeks.  This can likely be attributed to the €1.2 billion which has been paid out under the eight lump sum payments since the Budget.

I trust this clarifies the matter.