35. Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh asked the Minister for Social Protection the current refusal rates for first-time applications for carer's allowance, domiciliary care allowance and disability allowance; the percentage subsequently overturned on review or appeal; the current average processing time for first-time applications of these three payments; the current average processing time for a review and/or appeal; and the costs associated with reprocessing these applications. [67541/26]

Carer's Allowance is a weekly social welfare payment to people who care for someone because of their age, disability, or illness.

Figures requested by the Deputy are set out in the table below.  Note that it is not possible to provide the number of first-time applications refused as a percentage, due to the way data on registrations and decisions are collected.  Claims registered includes claims that were re-registered.  Claims awarded and claims rejected refer to the total number of claims awarded or rejected in the month, and include claim decisions in respect of claims registered in previous months, as well as those overturned on review or appeal of the initial decision.  Furthermore, multiple rejection actions can occur on a single claim, and are included in the figures, therefore care needs to be taken when interpreting the data.

Note that appeals can be made for reasons other than a claim being rejected, such as a reduced rate of payment as a result of a means test or on backdating of a claim.  Therefore, not all appeals shown here are for rejection of a claim.  It is not possible to provide separate statistics based on the reason for an appeal.

The cost associated with reprocessing applications where the refusal was appealed successfully is not available.

The number of claims registered and rejected, and the average time to award in August 2026 is shown in the below table:

* Includes Revised, Partially Allowed and Allowed appeal decisions.