Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is a concern I and the Ministers of State, Deputies Butler, Feighan and Rabbitte, share. What happened was that towards the end of 2020 we allocated almost €8 million specifically for assessments of need. To her credit, the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, took it on and drove around the country making sure the money was spent on assessments of need. A huge amount of work was done. The figures are that in June 2020 there were 6,558 overdue assessments of need. By the end of December, believe it or not, the backlog had been reduced from 6,500 to 330.