High success rate of social welfare appeals suggests issues with original decision-making

The figures were revealed in the Annual Report 2015 of the Social Welfare Appeals Office, the body responsible for handling social welfare appeals.

Legal rights group FLAC indicated its concern over the very high rate of appeals, with 60 per cent of the total 25,406 appeals decided in 2015 being successful.

Policy officer Ciarán Finlay noted the figure potentially indicates a great problem with decision-making by welfare officers on initial applications, concerns which have been raised in past years.

Mr Finlay said: “In some 5,2000 cases, the original decision-makers in the Department of Social Protection revised their own initially negative decision, which represents more than 20% of all appeals decided in 2015.”

Despite FLAC recognising the progress the Appeals Office is making in lowering the average processing times of appeals from 24.2 weeks in 2014 to 20.9 weeks in 2015, more work needs to be done to combat delays in decision making on initial applications, where payment may be the only source of income.

Mr Finlay stated: “We are particularly concerned by the average processing time of 18 weeks for appeals on Supplementary Welfare Allowance, a payment designed as a safety net for those with no income.”

As of June 2015, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights began to express concerns over the large number of initial negative decisions being overturned in the appeal stage, recommending that decisions made in appeals be of a transparent and rational manner, suggesting that further training be provided to the initial decision makers to reduce the number of appeals appearing in courts.

“FLAC appreciates the Chief Appeal’s Officer’s comments that her Office will make quality and consistency in decision-making a priority for 2016. Better first-instance decision-making could reduce delay, bureaucracy and spending. However, higher consistency and quality in decisions can only be achieved through enhanced training for Department officials making decisions on initial applications as well as the creation of an appeals database,” said Mr Finlay.

“The fact that decisions on social welfare appeals are not published routinely means that people appealing decisions are also forced to work in an information vacuum and are unclear how cases are decided. It is worth remembering that people cannot access state legal aid to advise and assist them in what can be a very complicated process,” he concluded.

The need for the government to make reforms in the social welfare appeals system a priority is the key objective for FLAC. FLAC’s report on the appeals system, Not Fair Enough, sets out the case for clear and complete reform based on human rights standards of transparency and access to an effective remedy.

The report calls for a catalogue of decisions made in appeals to be recorded, alongside placing the Appeal’s Office on a statutory independent footing, in order to create a system of fairness, prioritising urgent appeals cases and making civil legal aid available to those who undertake an appeals hearing.