Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Department's officials and the two representative organisations for their submissions which are illuminating. I thank particularly the DFI and the Carers Association for a number of useful suggestions they have made. I am pleased the Department's officials are present to listen to them and understand the logic which underlies claims being made in the first place. The major difficulty with claims based on a person's medical condition, as pointed out by the DFI and the Carers Association, is the number refused at first instance and which are successful on appeal. It means that a person who is eligible for the benefit from the beginning suffers much anguish and distress for an indefinite period before he or she finally receives it. That is and continues to be a very real problem. We must consider the people we are talking about., people who qualify under the Department's medical criteria for disability allowance, people who are ill, people who are caring for those who are mentally or physically ill. They have enough to get on with in life rather than go through all this hassle to obtain the benefit to which they are entitled.

I have a few specific questions. Ms Catherine Cox mentioned the difficulty in obtaining a carer's allowance where the caree is a person who suffers from an intellectual rather than a physical disability. We have all come across that problem. When a person comes to my constituency office seeking to make an application for a carer's allowance for looking after a child, parent or sibling who suffers from a mental rather than a physical condition, I confess to getting a sinking feeling because the success rate in those cases is very low.

Is there a breakdown to hand of the percentage-----