Ms Catherine Cox:

I will address one or two and then maybe Mr. Fox might address the more technical questions around the grant, etc. I will go back to transport to day services and schools where people have children with disabilities because I know this is a huge issue for families, particularly down the country. Many families tell us they may be offered a day service but they are told they have to provide their own transport and, in some cases, that is just not possible due to the costs, in particular. I know that is a huge challenge for families.

In terms of Vantastic, and there is another scheme called Accessible Community Transport Southside, ACTS, we said they should be fully evaluated to find out how good they are. If they are deemed to meet the needs of people with disabilities and their families, we believe they should be adequately funded. At the moment, however, they are not. Therefore, they have gaps in their funding and that is why some of them have either stopped or folded. I think there is room to look at those to see whether they could provide accessible transport to day services, for example, and schools as well.

To go back to the cost of a disability in a home, we did research very recently with the Vincentian Partnership for Social Justice. The findings were that it costs €244 per week more to provide care for a person with a disability in a home than it does in another home without a person with a disability. That is €244 on top of the other costs, and one of those costs in particular relates to transport. Another cost is buying in therapy services. There is no doubt that there is a cost in disability, which chimes with the Indecon report on the cost of disability.

I cannot believe we are sitting here nine years later and we still have no transport supports. The mobility allowance and motorised grant have not been replaced. It is inequitable, unfair and outrageous that there is still no support there to replace that. Rather than bring standards up and bring everybody into the loop for the mobility allowance, it was stopped completely and everybody was ruled out. That for us is a huge injustice and inequity.