Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I accept that, but the number of people going from domiciliary care allowance to disability allowance, and that is another debate - a big one - for another day, should not have increased by what we are figuring when the others would have been going the other way. I am definitely counting more and more cases in which the Department says the applicants should go onto disability allowance but then they get caught because they have partners or spouses - that is another day's work - but no invalidity pension. It did not happen before. My experience of the schemes until the past year or two was that they worked the same way, de facto if not de jure.