The High Court has ruled that an appeals officer can consider reopening a refused domiciliary care allowance claim when new evidence is presented, even after the claim has been treated as closed. It ordered the Appeals Office to consider the claimant’s request under section 317 of the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005. The court did not decide whether the allowance should be granted.
The judicial review was brought by CP, identified in the judgment as Ms P., after an appeals officer rejected her appeal in August 2012. The officer accepted that her daughter, identified as K., had a diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome but concluded that the evidence did not establish a need for substantial additional care on a continuous basis. The High Court expressly said the merits of that decision were not before it.
Ms P. later obtained reports from K.’s general practitioner, a specialist nurse, the school principal and a special needs teacher. In May 2013, the Department of Social Protection told her that the application was closed because it had been through the appeals process, while advising that she could make a fresh claim with additional information.
Her solicitor then asked the Chief Appeals Officer to revise the earlier decision under section 317, which permits revision “at any time” where new evidence or facts indicate that a decision may have been erroneous, or where circumstances have changed. The Appeals Office declined to entertain the request as a revision and treated it as a new application, forwarding the material to the Department for a deciding officer to consider.
The respondents argued that treating refused claims as open to revision could create administrative and financial difficulties, including uncertainty about backdating awards. The court said section 317 draws no distinction between claims in payment and refused claims, and contains no implied time limit of the kind the respondents proposed. It relied in part on the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Maher v Minister for Social Welfare, concerning a related revision power that also applied “at any time”.
The court found that the Appeals Office had erred in law by refusing to entertain Ms P.’s revision request. It quashed the Appeals Office decision of 22 July 2013 and ordered the Chief Appeals Officer, or another appropriate officer nominated for the purpose, to consider the request under section 317 in accordance with the law and the judgment. The order requires consideration of the revision application; it does not determine the original allowance claim or direct that payment be made.