Professor Mary Murphy:

It falls into the recommendation we have for the navigational group. The research threw up quite a bit about the medical assessment and the process. We mentioned "do not review" earlier as an example of how it could be improved. There are issues from the point of view of the medical profession in relation to its engagement and its capacity to engage with it. There are repeated forms that need to be filled in when they have already been filled in. There is already a Government policy on reusing existing administrative data that goes from one Department to another. Therefore, we can see a number of ways in which the medical review process could be made more streamlined, efficient and effective. That is the focus of the navigational group, but we still insist that it is necessary to have a medical assessment of eligibility. That is how one can put the boundaries around the number of people who would be eligible for a payment. The costing, therefore, is €397 million, and not the exaggerated cost that may have been put out as a political distraction, at some level.

It is really important to see that the costing is grounded in the Parliamentary Budget Office assessment of what the cost would be.