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

I submitted these two amendments and I will revert to them on Report Stage because there is no doubt in my mind that this section involves a deliberate subtle or not so subtle attempt to tighten eligibility and entitlement for carers. That is unacceptable. What it is doing essentially is to retrospectively legislate for what has been happening in practice, which is a tightening up of decisions to grant - or to refuse, should I say - where there has been a sort of default position of refusing people who are then forced to go through even more hoops and appeals in order to get what they are seeking. I can only assume this is in the hope that a significant portion of applicants would just give up and go away. Up to now, the legislation was ambiguous and that ambiguity allowed deciding officers to refuse people who really should not have been refused. However, this provision is shifting the balance towards the deciding officer to make it easier for the deciding officer to refuse people. That is what is happening. It is to restrict the eligibility in terms of the 12 months.

What happens if a person gets cancer and he or she is undergoing a very intense treatment of chemotherapy and is not already in the best shape? That person will need care for a temporary period that may not continue indefinitely if the treatment works. This is not an unusual situation. It may not be the case that this person will require care indefinitely beyond 12 months. This may or may not be the case but most definitely full-time care will be required for six or eight months during treatment. This provision will rule out such people. Similarly, if people suffer a particular injury when they are old and infirm, generally, this would mean they would require full-time care for a particular period but maybe not for an indefinite period. These people will be excluded. That is wrong.

It is also wrong that we are shifting the balance away from medical professionals onto non-medical people with regard to the issue of making decisions about medical eligibility. I refer to the statement in the explanatory memorandum to the Bill that the provision is to clarify that eligibility for these schemes is determined by a deciding officer on the basis of all information provided to support the applicant's claim, including all relevant medical evidence. The deciding officer is making the decision. Why would a deciding officer, a non-medical person, have any say at all on medical matters? If the deciding officer is to have a say on other eligibility criteria, for example, such as means testing, that is fair enough because deciding officers may be qualified to do that. However, that distinction has to be made. There should be absolutely no question of non-medical people second guessing medical diagnosis. Anything that does not clarify this is unacceptable and is allowing an ambiguity which ultimately translates into hardship and unfairness for people who have medical need.