Ms Joan O'Donnell:

Many of the issues are being echoed from various sides of the debate this afternoon. The primary issue that the Disability Federation of Ireland would have noticed and would have worked quite closely on with the Department was the fact that people were not filling out the forms properly. This was a surprise and a shock to all of us. The biggest surprise and shock was that this had become a deliberate strategy, not only by GPs and psychiatrists but by disability organisations which were routinely helping people to fill out forms. The issue seems to be cropping up here again today.

We have done an awful lot of work via the disability consultative forum in conjunction with the Department to address this issue and many improvements have been made. It will be interesting to see, with the improvement in the forms and, looking down the road, with the creation of a better balance between medical assessments and self-reporting, how much better the picture will look in 12 months' time. We hope there will be a significant improvement.

Deputy Ó Snodaigh's asked about a more holistic process of assessment and there is a couple of things I would like to point out about this. It needs to be done in conjunction with the person him or herself. Our colleagues in mental health in particular would say, on self-reporting in episodic conditions, that predicting over a period of time how well or not someone might be is something patients might know best themselves.

We would also say that our members, and disability and carers' organisations, often have lifelong relationships and professional interaction with many people with disabilities and can provide very insightful information that could aid applications. We see that communications is one of the major issues. The issue of communications not only applies to forms but the relationship between the applicant, or those acting on behalf of family member with a disability and the Department. There is a need to create a trusting relationship whereby people can rely on the fact that if they supply the correct information they will get the correct response. That is a relationship issue and a matter of trust. It is of major importance because the numbers on disability allowance have been rising and this is largely due to demographic changes, changes in population but also changes in eligibility for conditions such as autism. The purpose of disability allowance in particular has changed from when the disabled person's maintenance allowance, DPMA was the responsibility of the Department of Health and Children and the number of people in receipt of that allowance was between 26,000 to 28,000 people up to 1997 when it became the responsibility of the Department of Social Protection. We recognise the value of having a payment such as disability allowance but we also recognise that it is a contingency payment. People are living on this means tested payment as their primary income and therefore it is hugely important that there is the least amount of stress involved in the application process..

Disability allowance is a payment that is predicated on one's capacity to work not on one's medical condition. Dr. Singh has eloquently pointed that out. That needs to be communicated. I know the Department will be profiling all people on disability allowance during the course of the year to look at people's capacity to work. We hope that will encompass a broader sense of what people's capacities might be. We have to recognise that four out of five people acquire a disability during their working life. This is a societal issue. It is an issue that concerns all of us, not just the cohort of people who sit in a space that we do not interact with every day.