Social Welfare Benefits
Dail Éireann — 2023-10-24
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Heather Humphreys (FG), Cavan-Monaghan

I thank Deputy Canney. No more than they go to his office, people who have made applications also come to my constituency office. There are times when people make applications that not all of the information is provided. This is probably the main reason for the delays, to be honest. I have spoken to officials about this. They say that if all of the information is in, and all of the necessary documentation has been completed by the doctor and whatever else, the application can be processed very quickly. As I said earlier, the current average time for a decision is six weeks. It has to be processed and, as Deputy Canney said, people can get the supplementary welfare allowance until such time as it is processed. It is important to state that the payment is backdated from the first day it is sought.
To improve the speed of the appeals process I published a draft set of new appeals regulations, including regulations setting maximum time limits for responses from the Department. I did this earlier this year. The chief appeals officer is reviewing the feedback from the consultation. I expect to give effect to the new regulations shortly. The benefit of this is that the time taken to process appeals should be significantly improved.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2023-10-24/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:52:19+00:00
Sitting date: 2023-10-24