Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I am against this amendment because if we need people to make medical assessments, they should be employed full-time. We do not need agency people. The reason we have a backlog is the moratorium. Many Departments have massive backlogs because we are understaffed and that is having a detrimental effect on people who are awaiting decisions. It is also having a detrimental effect on the quality of the decisions made because they are made on the basis of ticking a box and without any real concern for the human beings involved. The way to deal with this is to recognise that we do not have enough staff in these areas and to take people on full-time and pay them properly, rather than using agency workers.

There is another aspect to this which concerns me. I do not understand why amendments in the same sort of area, and to which we will come in a minute, have been ruled out of order. They concern the basis on which we make adjudications where medical opinion is required. If, as is often the case, a GP says a person is in need of full-time care or is not able to work, why do we have people second-guessing him or her? The ultimate decisions are made by deciding officers who do not have any medical qualifications whatsoever and that is completely unacceptable. The Government could save the cost of taking on agency people if it accepted the word of a GP. If a GP says a person is in need of full-time care or is not able to work, that should be it - case closed. The decisions could be made on that basis, but instead we have a huge backlog and people who are not qualified to make decisions are second-guessing medical professionals. I assume they do so on the basis of looking to refuse people benefits to which medical professionals say they are entitled. It is unacceptable that people should have to jump through hoops when they have medical testimony from their own GP to the effect that they should be entitled to medical benefits or supports.