Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is not just a scheme for disabled persons who drive cars. It is a scheme for persons whose disability prevents them or seriously inhibits them from being mobile so the criteria are quite strict. It is a generous scheme and we have succeeded in maintaining it right through the crisis when many other schemes were either abolished or trimmed back. We are reviewing it now but we are not reviewing it with any intention of diminishing it. We want it focused properly in its original intent. It is a mobility scheme to ensure mobility to persons, not persons who are disabled but persons whose disability inhibits their mobility or prevents their mobility. The medical test is quite strict. We have had difficulties with it from the European Union as well in terms of reducing excise but we got over those by turning it into a grant scheme.