Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will not go over the ground Deputy O'Dea has already covered. On the last point about the motorised transport grant and the mobility allowance, we are as much in the dark about when the new scheme will appear as the witnesses and we have raised it both at this committee and at the Joint Committee on Public Service Oversight and Petitions, which I sit on. It has also been raised in the Joint Committee on Health and Children, so hopefully we will see some movement on that soon.

I have come across the issue of the adaptation grant quite often recently. This seems to be having a very severe effect on the elderly and those with disabilities in that they must find someone in the family who can foot some of the bill because if they do not apply early enough in the year, the local authority will not be able to give them the full amount as their budget will have run out. It is hard luck if one ends up with a disability in the middle of a year. One's house will not be adapted in many ways unless the council can juggle budgets. I wanted to find out whether these reductions in the money available in the adaptation grants from the local authority happen in areas other than my own, as I am in the city.

I was interested in what Mr. Dolan said about the Intreo offices. The Minister has come before this committee and if Mr. Dolan lets us know about other similar issues, we will raise them with the Minister directly because there has been much fanfare about these offices. I have welcomed them, I have attended the openings of them and if there are problems with access, etc., as was presented in Mr. Dolan's statement, let us know and the committee will put it to the officials and to the Ministers.

I wish to thank the organisations, most of whose representatives I have met on and off over the last few years, for their forbearance and for presenting well the harshness of the cuts and their effects on those the witnesses represent because I do not think it can be easy to do that dispassionately. I know the witnesses are not dispassionate, but it can sometimes be difficult to put across the scale of the hurt in many ways. We can probably all give examples of constituents who have suffered the effects of cuts, particularly the elderly and those with disabilities, who are on a fixed income and do not have the ability to increase their funding in any way. They are limited in mobility, which means that they are often more greatly affected if there is a cold spell and that is why the issue of fuel poverty among these groups, which is thankfully being looked at by various organisations, is very significant. I endorse Ms Hayes's call for a two week extension, but I would have asked for a full reversal. I would also ask for the more rapid roll-out of the retrofitting of people's houses to ensure that the insulation that is now available relatively cheaply in comparison with the past is rolled out for people who are living alone or living in houses which are not suitable for this day and age.