The Minister for Social and Family Affairs has said everything is being done to speed up the process of welfare payments.

Mary Hanafin was responding this afternoon to questions from Fine Gael's Olwyn Enright, who said the waiting time for job-seekers allowance in Edenderry, Co. Offaly is 22 weeks.

But Minister Hanafin said average waiting times for payments around the country were actually coming down.

"In the case of illness benefit about 50,000 medical certificates are received each week and the average processing time is a week," the minister said.

"95% of maternity benefit claims are processed prior to the woman commencing her maternity leave."

"The average processing time for domestic state pension contributory claims is seven weeks and where all of the family reside in Ireland the average processing time for child benefit is four weeks."