Mr. R?n?n Hession:

I thank the Senator. I will address some of the questions. I will ask Dr. Waters to address the consultation point and Dr. Singh to address the medical assessment.

On the question of whether there will be a means test for the replacement for invalidity pension, the short answer is "No". There will be two doors into the new payment. At the moment, the two doors are invalidity pension and disability allowance. Invalidity pension is contribution-based and disability allowance is means-based. Those two doors will stay, but they will have the same sign over them, saying "Personal support payment". It will be a bit like it is for the State pension where people can qualify based on their contributions, with no means test, or alternatively people can get a means tested pension. Those people will not be subjected to a means test.

Regarding the employment services and how we deliver those, at the moment we largely do it through our Intreo service, but we also rely on the EmployAbility Services, which is a specialist disability service. Most likely we will have to expand that and rely on it. We also deliver programmes through dormant accounts funding which we may have to mainstream. Some 27 groups all around the country benefit from that. Some of the delivery might be through some of those groups outside the Department, or in collaboration with them. As I referenced earlier, we have done a project in the north east with the One Family Ireland. It will be a mix of those approaches.

On the DCA and the period between 16 years to 18 years, I had to check a point while the Senator was asking his question so I hope I have not missed it, but he can clarify if I have done so. For the 16 to 18 age group, it is proposed that there will be some sort of transition for people over the next number of years. It might kick in for children who are currently 14 but anyone who is 15, 16 or 17 years of age will continue in the current system. This is something we consulted on before. We received mixed feedback but slightly more leaning towards making the change than not making it. We want to test where people are at on that now.

On the means test for DA, when I spoke here on the straw man on pay-related benefit, I mentioned that we were looking at a working-age payment model. In the Green Paper, we have asked for people's views on whether that would work for people on disability allowance also. At the moment, €165 is the disregard. People are at €495 before they lose their payment in total. What we tend to see is that people work right up to the level of €165, then stop because they do not want to lose their payment and they are also considering their secondary benefits.

We suggested in the Green Paper the possibility of looking at the working-age model, which is similar to working family payment. Working family payment misses two categories, childless couples and single people. Those two categories would effectively be added with an appropriate threshold. To make the sums easy, let us say the threshold is €500 and a person earns €400. They keep 60% of the difference so they keep €60. It means that people, while keeping an eye on the threshold, can vary their work, and they can figure out what it will mean for them in terms of the top up payment. It overcomes some of the issues and some of the clunkiness that exists around elements like disregards and number of days worked, and so on. That is the idea. Even on the straw man discussions for pay-related benefit, the general tone of the response from people was that they thought it might be okay, but they would have to learn a bit more about. I suspect we will get similar feedback in this regard.