Barry Heneghan (Dublin Bay North, Independent)
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719. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the average processing time for appeals to the Social Welfare Appeals Office for disability allowance cases, in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [63362/25]

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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The average waiting time for a decision on disability allowance appeals as of end of Quarter 3 2025 is 21 weeks.

The Annual Report of the Chief Appeals Officer is published each year and includes information on average processing times for disability allowance appeals for previous years. The reports for years 2015 to 2024 are available on the Social Welfare Appeals Office website. (News and Publications from the Social Welfare Appeals Office (www.gov.ie).

The time taken to process appeals includes all aspects of the appeal process. The appeal contentions and any additional documentation is referred back to the relevant scheme area to consider if they can revise their decision. A significant number of appeals are dealt with in this way. Where the first instance decision is not revised in favour of the appellant, the appeal is then considered by the Appeals Officer who may decide the appeal summarily or hold an oral hearing.

The Chief Appeals Officer continues to monitor the number of appeals on hand and appeal processing times, and every effort is made to reduce the time taken to process an appeal. Considerable progress has been made with a total of 44,307 appeals across all schemes finalised by the end of October 2025. This is a 96% increase in productivity on the 22,610 dealt with at end of October 2024. As a result, pending appeals volumes have been more than halved from over 22,000 in January this year to about 11,000 currently and are continuing to fall.

I trust this clarifies the matter for the deputy.