Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I will move on now to another issue which has become apparent to us through our constituency offices. Sometimes lots of similar cases are brought to us and we can see trends. That is currently the case with regard to domiciliary care allowance, DCA, payments. In the first instance, there seems to be a very high level of refusals. We have had people coming to our offices in tears and so on. We have to work with them to try to make sure they use the right wording in their applications. Often we are dealing with cases of children with very high levels of dependence who may be non-verbal or autistic. It is very difficult to see how they could be refused but I am seeing such cases being refused. We help the applicants with an appeal or a review. In many cases they are approved following a review but if not, they can submit an appeal. I ask Mr. McKeon to provide information on the profile of first-time rejections of domiciliary care allowance applications and those that are overturned on review. There is an administrative cost as well as a human cost in relation to this. I also ask him to provide information on the number of rejections that go to appeal and are overturned on appeal. I also ask him to provide follow-up information on refusals of claims that are related to illness or disability.