Row leads to benefit delay fear for 74,000 sick workers
AS many as 74,000 sick workers could face long delays in their badly needed illness benefit payments as a row between GPs and the Department of Social Protection threatens to escalate.
A number of employees are already affected as some GPs refuse to use new benefit forms, and now the civil servants who handle the forms are threatening industrial action.
The new forms are part of a process to move the system online. The department says the actions of ‘some GPs’ has led to delays in processing applications for some of the 74,000 or so people who apply weekly for Illness Benefit and Occupational Injury Benefit payments. Civil servants who have to process the new forms say they are being increasingly subjected to abusive phone calls from frustrated employees.
Their union Fórsa said last night: ‘The department needs to act urgently. Fórsa has advised management at the department that if the current situation continues we will exercise the option of a ballot for industrial action in order to protect our members.’
GPs say they have not been consulted properly about the new forms and feel they are being ‘bullied’ into using a new system that requires more information to be inputted by them for no more money.
The National Association of General Practitioners, which represents 2,000 GPs, said: ‘It is simply impossible to implement the new forms until all concerns have been satisfied and terms and conditions have been agreed.’
It added: ‘It is with a sense of grave concern and disappointment the NAGP has learned the Department of Social Protection is suggesting that GPs are to blame for a calamity of its own making. The department is stating the delays in payments are due to GPs refusing to use the new forms and causing significant delays to processing time. This is a tactic to bully GPs into changing work practice without mediation or negotiation.’
However, a spokesperson for the department last night said the forms do not create any additional work for GPs.
The Irish Medical Organisation said: ‘There was specific agreement that pending full negotiation on resources, GPs could continue to use the existing form or move to the new form. The IMO do not accept there is any validity in the comment that GPs are responsible for delay in payments.’