Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
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435. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the current average waiting time and longest waiting time for social welfare claims, and separately, for claim appeals; and the steps her Department is taking to reduce the backlog of appeals of social welfare claims and the waiting times. [15408/23]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The Social Welfare Appeals Office functions independently of the Minister for Social Protection and of the Department and is responsible for determining appeals against decisions in relation to social welfare entitlements.

All claim decisions taken by the Department’s Deciding Officers and Designated Persons are appealable to the Chief Appeals Officer. In any year about 85% of all claims are awarded by the Department and approximately 1% are appealed. The Department endeavours to ensure that these cases are dealt with as quickly as possible.

The desire to process appeals quickly has to be balanced with the competing demand to ensure that decisions are consistent and of high quality and made in accordance with the legislative provisions and the general principles of fair procedures and natural justice.

The current average processing times for an appeal with the Social Welfare Appeals Office are 18.6 weeks for a summary decision and 34.8 weeks for a decision by way of oral hearing. These figures are based on appeals finalised in February 2023. The processing time for appeals broken down by scheme for that month are set out in the attached table. It should be noted that the average appeals processing time for some schemes (and especially in respect of oral hearing decisions) may be significantly influenced by the finalisation of a single or a very small number of long-running cases.

Significant efforts and resources have been devoted to improvements in the appeal process in recent years. As a result, average appeal processing times have generally improved between 2018 and 2022 from 30.0 weeks for an oral hearing in 2018 to 26.0 weeks in 2022, and from 24.8 weeks for a summary decision in 2018 to 15.0 weeks in 2022. The average time for all appeals finalised in 2022 was 14.9 weeks.

There is active engagement between the Appeals Office and the Department to ensure that the appeals process operates efficiently and that where the Deciding Officer's decision is not revised in favour of the appellant that the appeal file papers are provided as quickly as possible to the Appeals Office for consideration by an Appeals Officer.

There are currently 42 Appeals Officers assigned to the Appeals Office. Further improvements in appeals processing times are a priority for the Chief Appeals Officer.

The average weeks to award by scheme for February 2023 are shown in the table below. The disability allowance scheme currently has the longest average weeks to award at 10 weeks.

I trust this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.

Appeal Processing Times by Scheme 1 February 2023– 28 February 2023