Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 15 January 2026
416. Deputy Albert Dolan asked the Minister for Social Protection the measures being taken to reduce waiting times for appeals within the social welfare appeals office; his plans to improve communication with appellants during the appeals process, including the provision of timely updates on the status of their appeal; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [1782/26]
View answerThe Social Welfare Appeals Office is committed to providing a quality service to all its customers. This includes ensuring that appeal applications are processed and appeal decisions are made as quickly as possible.
In 2024, the Department’s Deciding Officers and Designated Persons made almost 3.4 million decisions. Of these, 174,000 claims were disallowed or rejected (representing 5% of all decisions). 40,684 appeals were registered in 2025 which represents just over 1% of the overall total decisions and contrasts with appeal volumes of just over 20,000 in previous years.
The increase in appeal volumes is believed to be attributable to two factors - first demographic factors leading to higher demand for pensions, disability and carer's payments and second the introduction of a simple to use online appeals process.
Recognising that neither of these two factors is likely to change, the Chief Appeals Officer has put in place measures to deal with the increase in appeals registered and considerable progress has since been made with over 52,000 appeals finalised in 2025, compared to 28,702 finalised in 2024. This represents an increase of over 80%. As a result, pending appeals volumes have been more than halved from over 22,000 in January 2024 to about 9,500 currently and are continuing to fall.
Inevitably as the office clears a backlog reported processing times increase. Nevertheless, the average time to process an appeal at the end of 2025 of 21.2 weeks which is lower than the average of 23.5 weeks for 2024. Processing times are continuing to fall.
New Social Welfare Appeals Regulations (S.I. No. 744 of 2024) came into effect from Monday, 28 April 2025. The purpose of these regulations is to modernise and streamline the social welfare appeals process, providing greater clarity, improved consistency, and more defined timeframes. It is expected that this will further reduce the number of appeals on hand and the length of time it takes for appeals to be processed and decided.
An Appeals Modernisation Project to develop and implement a new appeals business process, including the manner in which the appeals process interacts with the Department was completed in 2025. The project’s purpose is to streamline and enhance the end-to-end appeals process for the customer. The new system provides online capabilities to provide a more efficient and streamlined service for people availing of services and functionality on MyWelfare for making appeals. This change supports the end-to-end electronic processing of appeals. It provides a secure, comprehensive, online appeals service for customers. It is improving the customer experience by offering an additional online channel, facilitating 24/7 access to view their current appeal status which has helped improve communications with appellants during the appeals process.
The Chief Appeals Officer continues to monitor the number of appeals on hand and the appeal 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.
I trust this clarifies the matter for the deputy
