Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Some 4,700 people are receiving the mobility allowance. At approximately €2,500 per person the annual figure should be €11.7 million. If it were to rise to €100 million on the basis of the estimates Ms Fitzpatrick did, it suggests a nine or tenfold jump in just the annual payment envisaged. Is it huge numbers of people by virtue of age cut-off points or other eligibility criteria? The €200 million over three years suggests a jump from 300 people in receipt of it to approximately 19,000. That would indicate we need to review the needs and how we can commit to meeting those needs. In some cases for people not already in the scheme, we may need to look at different ways to provide the transport requirements for them to maintain as much independence as possible. We need to commit to the people who need the physical benefits of what these allowances and grants provide that they are left at least as well off and hopefully even better cared for than they stand at the moment.

Regarding equality, in applications for university, for instance, not everybody who wants to go can go. There will always be some degree of eligibility criteria. However, we must err on the side of generosity rather than meanness.

I was heartened to hear from Ms Duffy that Department officials have been agonising over this since 2009. Perhaps rather than agonising on their own, they should have been telling the public that they had been agonising about it and then the problem might not have exploded out from an Ombudsman's point of view. However, even the Ombudsman agonised before the report was issued and was not clear over whether there had been breaches of equality status. It is a matter of people in officialdom fessing up quicker and getting the problems in the public domain more quickly.