Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)
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800. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if he will provide a breakdown of the average processing time, average appeal processing times, the number of applications that were successful, the number of applications rejected, the number of rejected applications appealed, the number of appeals granted, and the average length of time from application to final decision, for each of the years 2017, 2018, 2023 and 2024 and for the first quarter of 2025, for several social welfare payments (details supplied), in tabular form.; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [23754/25]

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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The Social Welfare Appeals Office is an Office of the Department of Social Protection which is responsible for determining appeals against decisions in relation to social welfare entitlements. Appeals Officers are independent in their decision making functions.

The Annual Report of the Chief Appeals Officer is published each year and includes the detailed information requested. The reports for years 2017 to 2023 are available on the Social Welfare Appeals Office website. (News and Publications from the Social Welfare Appeals Office (www.gov.ie) and set out the information requested by the Deputy.

The requested data for claims processing times for 2017 to 2023 are available in the Department’s Annual Statistics Reports which are available on the Department’s website (Publications from Department of Social Protection (www.gov.ie)

Figures for 2024 and the first quarter of 2025 are provisional and not final. Final figures for 2024 will be published in both Annual reports, which are due to be published later this year.

The Appeals data for the year 2024 and Quarter 1 of 2025 is in tabular form below. The corresponding claim data for all listed schemes is currently being finalised and will be published shortly in the Annual Report.

The time taken to process appeals reflects the need to consider each decision in detail and, in many cases, to examine additional information submitted at appeal stage and, in some cases to seek further information by way of correspondence or oral hearing. The Chief Appeals Officer continues to monitor processing times and every effort is made to reduce the time taken to process an appeal. However, the drive for efficiency must be balanced with the competing demand to ensure that decisions are consistent and made in accordance with the provisions set out in primary legislation and regulations

The Chief Appeals Officer has put in place measures to improve appeals processing performance. 20 additional staff have now been assigned and are processing appeals. In addition new Appeals Regulations have come into effect from the 28th of April which provide, among other things, for simpler processes and specified response times. These should further help to reduce processing times.

I trust this clarifies the matter for the deputy.