DELAYS IN processing claims for the carer’s allowance and benefit have arisen because of the roll out of new systems to deal with increased volumes of new applications, the Dáil has heard.

Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton said a major modernisation programme was under way, including the development and roll out of new computer systems for invalidity pensions, carer’s allowance and disability allowance. This was “resource intensive” and had had a “negative impact on the claims-processing performance”.

However, once it was fully implemented, performance would “recover and improve” and would minimise duplication. She rejected charges that it was taking six months to process claims, saying the average wait was 17 weeks, “in the third quarter to the end of September 2011”, for the carer’s allowance. The average waiting time last year for carer’s benefit was 10 weeks.

Ms Burton said figures for the last quarter of 2011 were not available because of the introduction of the new claims-processing system.

People Before Profit TD Joan Collins raised the issue during social protection question time. Her experience was that people had been waiting since July 2011 “and it is just not good enough that people have to wait around that long to get clarification on whether they are entitled to the allowance or not”.

The Dublin South-Central TD said people had had to get credit union loans to keep themselves going while waiting. The same was happening for an invalidity pension, she said. A person might apply and be refused an invalidity pension. A review took 12 weeks and if that failed, there was a six-month wait for an appeal.