Mr. R?n?n Hession:

I thank the Senator for the questions, one of which referred to the housing adaptation grant. I am not aware that we have been consulted directly on that although my team on the disability policy side is engaged in a plethora of interdepartmental groups and the issue may well have arisen in one of those forums. We certainly have membership of the national disability inclusion strategy steering group, which is the main forum where stakeholders and other Departments do their discussions of business around disability. One of my team is our lead representative and the matter may have come up in that forum but I am not aware of anything specific so I will not improvise in that regard.

The 6,000 people who get the carer's support grant but not carer's allowance do not have to report their income to us and we do not know what they are earning or what level would bring them in, which I think is the meaning behind the Senator's question. We know there are approximately 8,000 people on carer's allowance who are getting a reduced rate. These are people who have means to declare so they are above the threshold but the threshold tapers down to a particular point. There are approximately 8,000 people on that rate.

I think I have responded to everything the Senator asked of me. I will come back to Deputy Ó Cuív who asked earlier about statistics. I will share those statistics so they are there for the record. The Deputy asked about farm assist and said that fewer people on the farm assist payment have adult dependants and child dependants now than would have been the case previously. That tells us something about their stage of life, that is, they are older, etc. That appears to be the case. In 2011, there were just over 5,000 adult dependants and just over 8,000 child dependants on farm assist. In 2020, those figures were down to 2,200 adult dependants and 3,200 child dependants. Those figures were included in our published annual statistics report, which is on our website. There is a full breakdown for all the intervening years. If there is any further detail required, we are certainly happy to provide it.