Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, United Left) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their reports and congratulate them on the campaign in defence of the travel pass, which was very effective. We are getting conflicting reports; on one hand we hear that austerity may be over and that there will be tax cuts and then, on the other, the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council and others say that we must continue with austerity, mentioning the troika, the European Commission and the rest.

It is very hard to know exactly what is going to come down the tracks on budget day. At a minimum services have to be protected and built on because they are the crucial areas where people can access a small amount of money. They have to be put back into place. There are other small things that could be highlighted. Particularly with the income reduction from €700 to €500 for over 70s, we have found a huge swathe of people who are having their medical cards docked. These are mainly people who have a contributory pension, a small work pension for example, that is just bringing them over the threshold. We had a man who got an increase of €10 when he turned 80, and that brought him over the income threshold for the medical card. He lost out hugely from that, and that is an example of a bureaucracy being an incredible morass. Agencies cannot be flexible. This man was requesting that the €10 be taken back off him so that they could give him back his medical card. He was given a GP card. We are also dealing with a 92 year-old woman in a nursing home at the moment, who has Alzheimer's disease. She is €20 over and her medical card has been stopped. I do not understand this.

This madness should be the first thing to be stopped and then we can look where we can build. As was stated earlier, undoing the cuts in disability allowance, household packages, home helps, SNAs and so on has to be prioritised. We should be looking for the Government to set out a plan for what we are going to do this time, what we are going to do next time if we have any more money, and allocate that money to try and protect those services and build on them.

Another issue that was raised with me is that the local property tax is not levied on hospitals or nursing homes. Surely the homes of people who are carers are considered as a medical type area or safe place that should not be included for the local property tax, because they are specifically medical places of care.

Have the witnesses found that many people are not getting that next step from the domiciliary care allowance to the disability allowance when they reach 16 years of age? Is there feedback of instances where people are having difficulty with this?

A large number of elderly people have used up all their savings now because they have been supporting their families. Many of them went guarantor for mortgages that were way above what they should have been, leading to mortgage arrears. There are also many elderly people who support family members who are in mortgage arrears, paying that as well. My own mother does it. All those savings are being eaten away. The vulnerability that leaves people in is terrible. They have always been told to be frugal and to put their money aside and save. That has to be part of the debate.