# invalidity pension waiting time



## karen29

Hi , This is my 1st time posting on this but im just wondering if anyone out there has any advise for me.
I have been receiving IB for 2 yrs now and this will run out on the 25th april ( wednesday ), i have applied for IP but am still waiting to hear back from them.
I m worried now as to what i will do for money as i dont know if i will get paid this week or not , does anyone know the waiting time for IP and what i can do in the meantime while im waiting. 
Thanks.


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## gipimann

The waiting time for Invalidity Pension can be several weeks, although the section tries to prioritise people like yourself who are coming to the end of their Illness Benefit entitlement.

If you have no income, you can apply for Supplementary Welfare Allowance (SWA).  It is a means-tested payment.  If you qualify for SWA, it can be paid until your Pension is sorted out.

Your local SWA Officer is generally based at the SW local office or a HSE Health Centre.


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## shazz

*invalidity pension advice*

hi,I am 45yrs and in recite of DA used to DPMA since 89. Can you please advise me on ip. i applied in november 2011 and they lost my file. they sent me another application form in April to fill in and said that it would be processed straight away. A week later i got request for my birth cert (I am Irish). and then I got a medical form to be filled in by my doctor. they have received that form also and now i am told it will take up to and at least 16 weeks. I am on a reduced rate of DA because of a maintenance payment from my partner whom is in a nursing home. I am struggling to keep going and i don't know what to do. it was suggested that i would go to a community welfare officer but I just feel they will tell me to wait on my claim? sorry if this sounds so mixed up. is there anything more i can do?


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## STEINER

My 2 years of Illness Benefit expired last week.  I applied for Invalidity Pension 14 months ago.  I was told by staff in Sligo that they only look at your application when your Illness Benefit is close to expiration.  When I pointed out on the phone that even this system is not working as my application has not been examined yet, the staff member just repeated the standard mantra of short staffage/1,000's of applications and told me it would be some time yet before someone would even look at my application.  She advised me to ask my local CWO for assistance as I actually have zero income.  

Its quite unacceptable to treat my application in this manner.  My application should have been decided upon prior to IB expiration.  I pity anyone having to endure the excessive waiting periods for decisions/payments for any DSP payment.


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## gimp

Having gone through some of this i might as well share it for anyone it may help.

Waited over 18 months for decision on Invalidity pension. Eventually after being refused and appealing it and being refused again and appealing again I was granted an Oral Hearing and then granted IP. Which was inevitable in one sense as i had full medical history and they would have had to prove a medical miracle basically to have refused it. I think they now just refuse automatically so appeal if you have the documentation and condition to back it up . 
IP should be looked at as a separate application as you can apply for it at any time. If you are going to be out of work for longer than 12 months or permanently.

Numerous documents were claimed to have been not received so I now insist in sending in hard copies by post and pdf files by email if i have to deal with DSW. Personally i think this is a delaying tactic by DSW. We did not receive it so please waste all your time in sending it in again and go back on the Queue. 
So much for agreed efficiencies with the Croke Park agreement.


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## Time

18 months is nothing. I know of someone who is still waiting on a decision over 20 months. The system is allowing thousands of people to skip the queue because they are claiming IB for 2 years. Grossly unfair.


> I was told by staff in Sligo that they only look at your application when your Illness Benefit is close to expiration.


So in the case of someone with a grandfathered IB claim they will never get around to looking and it certainly is true in many cases.


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## PeadarB

gimp said:


> Having gone through some of this i might as well share it for anyone it may help.
> 
> Waited over 18 months for decision on Invalidity pension.


 
My wifes IB finished last month. She applied for IP some months ago but sent in her medical assessment form last month along with her most recent medical reports, these dated within the past couple of weeks. Decision was quickly made in her case - deemed not incapable of work. This despite being off sick for two and a half years. Medical complications have continued to keep her off work. Both doctor and consultant decided that she is no longer fit to work. Phoning the section she was told to get new medical reports - unbelievable as the ones she submitted were still hot from her medics. At 64 the whole experience is very dispiriting and demeaning.


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## STEINER

PeadarB said:


> My wifes IB finished last month. She applied for IP some months ago but sent in her medical assessment form last month along with her most recent medical reports, these dated within the past couple of weeks. Decision was quickly made in her case - deemed not incapable of work. This despite being off sick for two and a half years. Medical complications have continued to keep her off work. Both doctor and consultant decided that she is no longer fit to work. Phoning the section she was told to get new medical reports - unbelievable as the ones she submitted were still hot from her medics. At 64 the whole experience is very dispiriting and demeaning.



In my opinion the application process is deeply flawed and is so designed to deter applicants.  Genuinely ill people are being treated shamefully.  On enquiry from the IP section I was told that they are snowed under with applications and are understaffed.  When, after 13 months, my IP application was rejected on medical grounds, the penny dropped for me.  I looked at a blank IP application, http://www.welfare.ie/EN/Forms/Documents/inv1.pdf

There are some 52 questions/boxes to respond to, much of which are irrelevant for this non-means tested pension.  Questions 16 and 17 simply ask what illness you have and the date it started.  The form doesn't ask for medical history/evidence. It should invite an applicant to send evidence with the form, as it is an application for invalidity pension.  This would speed up the process.

I am now in month 17 of the application process, sending in extensive medical evidence for Deciding Officer review.  I expect rejection and I will appeal, its not like I have a job to go to.  I try not to let the IP section grind me down.  What I  don't understand is how the person in charge of the IP section remains in charge, there in Longford.  The entire process is farcical.


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## PeadarB

STEINER, agreed. It seems that existing Illness Benefit recipients are given priority over applications received in the normal course. This is to facilitate a "seamless" move over to Invalidity Pension. That is where the difference ends. 

The waiting periods are every bit as long in both scenarios. How do you explain to someone who has spent a long time on Illness Benefit, having gone through all the medicals and interviews, that once they reach the stage where they should have moved on to Invalidity Pension that the Departments Medical Advisor, with only the benefit of a questionairre, can form a dubious opinion that a person is not permanently incapable of work. No medical examination, (already done for Injury Benefit, Illness Benefit, permission to work in a rehabilitative capacity) and no interview. Very strange that you are deemed ill enough to receive the first series of benefits. Yet with the same or worse medical condition you are suddenly deemed fit to work. Repeated private reports from doctors and consultants over the period of attempted recovery from the illness/injury seem to count for nothing in this flawed process. 


Where is the safety net for these people? It's not as if they or their employers didn't pay for it through high PRSI contributions over the years. Yet they are cut off and left to suffer even further loss without income of any sort. Some show after 39 years in the workforce and rearing a family at the same time. My wifes bills and expenses didn't stop when her Illness Benefit ended. Adding insult to injury she is now left without the means to lead her own independent life, little and all as that benefit was. My small salary precluded her from receiving any other "means tested" allowance. This whole process has left her mental health in a very fragile state and my bank manager very concerned with the huge loss of income in the household.


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## Time

> It seems that existing Illness Benefit recipients are given priority over applications received in the normal course. This is to facilitate a "seamless" move over to Invalidity Pension.


There would seem to be legal issues involved with giving certain applicants priority that will ultimately get the dept into serious bother in the courts.


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## PeadarB

Time said:


> There would seem to be legal issues involved with giving certain applicants priority that will ultimately get the dept into serious bother in the courts.


To be fair to the DFP persons coming to the end of their period on Illness Benefit are actually invited to apply for Invalidity Pension, if they feel that it is likely they would still be unfit for work for a further minimum period of at lease 12 months, after the entitlement to Illness Benefit ended, or that they would continue to be permanently incapable of work.

I find it very disturbing that a person, previously entitled to a benefit, based on medical evidence and PRSI payments, can be suddenly cut off that payment when the PRSI conditions remain satisfied and the medical condition, duly vouched for by medical experts, has continued or become worse, in the intervening period. 

I am astonished that any medical referee of the Department can over-rule expert diagnosis without a second thought.


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## Time

> To be fair to the DFP persons coming to the end of their period on Illness Benefit are actually invited to apply for Invalidity Pension,


And it is these people who are prioritised over other applicants. 

There are people waiting very long periods for a decision but nothing is happening because the dept are refusing to even process their applications due to their favouritism to certain classes of applicant.


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## PeadarB

Time said:


> And it is these people who are prioritised over other applicants.
> 
> There are people waiting very long periods for a decision but nothing is happening because the dept are refusing to even process their applications due to their favouritism to certain classes of applicant.


At least 60% of applications for Disability Allowance (means tested) or Invalidity Pension (not means tested) are being disallowed. The resulting reviews and appeals are equally protracted for everyone. 

It took eighteen months or more for my wife to get a final decision on her Disablement Pension claim after an accident at work. 

It was the change in Illness Benefit regulations that have led directly to the present position. I can't see that favouritism is an issue here at all, as everyone is caught in the same trap.


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## PeadarB

We are now a further 15 weeks down the road waiting to hear if the wifes review has been looked at by the medical assessor.

I have serious doubts that there is some policy at play here where genuine applicants are being ground down by indeterminate delays in this patently flawed process.

I have seen a woman go, over a three year period, from an initial state of shock and disbelief after a serious injury at work, which she expected to fully recover from, to a state of complete debility and paranoia having been treated in such a contemptible fashion by the one government department charged with looking after her welfare. It saddens me to think that any government department could continually treat their customers in such a demeaning way.

It’s a sorry state of affairs when you get so little in return for contributing so much to a social welfare fund for over 39 years.


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## lucia

*invalidity pension*

Hi,this is my first time posting here I really need an advice !I was on IB for two years.Over a year ago I was told to apply for a long term payment and I can only qualify for DA because I don't have enough PRSI paid in Ireland and my PRSI paid in abroad doesn't count here .Wrong advice (from a social welfare officer) !I applied for DA and after a long time I finally got it ,but it was only half the IB payment and I couldn't manage with that.So I went back to the social services and asked what can I do.I had a shock when I was told that my PRSI payed abroad DOES count and I can get another year IB and and apply for IP.So I wrote a letter to DA section Longford  and explained to them why I decided to keep my IB payment as long as I was entitled .At the end of april I applied and I was called for a medical assessment in october but didn't hear anything back since.My IB payment stopped in july and I don't have any income at the moment.My husbands working days were reduced to 3 and gets JB for the other two days ,but steel struggling to cope with mortgage and everything.What can I do now ?Should I ring the IP section or what else can I do?I'm desperate and terrible stressed ,my medical condition is worsening and I can't even buy my prescription (I don't have 50 cents /each medicine ,7 euro /prescription ).


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## lucia

Nobody can give me a little advice ???


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## gipimann

As you have had the medical assessment, it means that your application is being processed.

Contact Invalidity Pension section is the best advice as only they will know where your application is.

Depending on your total income and other circumstances, you might be eligible for Mortgage Interest Supplement.   Contact the SWA Officer at your local Health Centre or SW Local Office for more information.


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