Brendan Ryan (Dublin North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I would also like to thank the Carers Association, the Disability Federation of Ireland and the Department for coming before the committee to discuss this topic today. As a practitioner in the area and like other colleagues, each of us who have been asked to comment could have raised the same issues as the delegations. We know what is happening on the ground. There are real concerns. In fairness to the Department, it has argued in the past that the high success rate of appeals is down to insufficient evidence being presented at the application stage. I know that to be correct in some cases. I know of a recent case which went to an appeal and it turned out that almost no information was required at the application stage. We knew that the presentation of additional evidence at appeal stage would almost guarantee success, and the person was successful. There is a gap.

I refer to what the Carers Association has asked for, with particular reference to the success of the process around domiciliary care allowance. What is required and what people are asking for is that there be a review process. As a committee we could recommend that should happen. Department officials have said discussions are under way with medical stakeholders, but the process needs to go beyond that and be formalised to a greater degree. From the point of view of the departmental management of the process, it is absolutely inefficient to have a system whereby there is a significant level of success at the appeal stage. If one was managing a system with such a lack of efficiency in the private sector, one would say it had to be re-examined.

My recommendation is that we take on board the request from the Carers Association that there would be a more formal review and the inputs from the various stakeholders would be taken on board. If we could agree that today, we would have had a very successful meeting.