Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Good. I am pleased to hear that.

My next question follows on from the witnesses’ dialogue with Deputy Ó Cuív and people in tier 3.

Actually, I had one further question on the medical assessment side of things. Would the decision of the medical assessor be binding on the deciding officer or would the deciding officer have some discretion? I ask this question because, although I hate to keep harking back to it, one of the criticisms of the British model is that the tiered system was rigid and did not take into account subtleties and nuances. Deputy Ó Cuív gave the example of someone who had been a blocklayer all his or her life and who now had some sort of physical disability, perhaps affecting his or her back. Intellectually, that person might be capable of other types of work, but for reasons of education, experience and so on, that is not a realistic option. In such situations, a medical assessor might say that the person is perfectly capable of doing clerical work in an office or whatever. Would the deciding officer be in a position to take that on board but, given the context, decide that the person should not realistically be expected to seek work? Would the officer still have that discretion?