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

A thought occurred to me that applies to the current regime but it would apply to the future regime as well. I have come across it twice recently. It involves somebody with a rare illness - the kind of illness where there might be 400 cases in the world. There are a variety of very rare illnesses. In both cases, I dealt with people who would probably struggle with the administration side of it. I think they found the process a bit difficult in that there was a lot of gathering of information. For a lot of conditions, you are dealing primarily with one consultant but with a rare disease, you might be dealing with six or seven, all of whom are dealing with different elements of the disease. I am not a medical expert. This is just my experience in these cases. Sometimes in those instances, the Department could be a bit more proactive. It is not appropriate in most circumstances but it is an awful lot of information. For example, an applicant might write a letter outlining the impact of this illness on him or her, or his or her child, but he or she might not necessarily have all the letters and documents he or she needs and the medical literacy to compile all that information. Would the Department consider that if it gets this letter and it mentions a number of consultants, the Department would contact the consultants itself and ask what the story is rather than the customer having to get ten detailed documents when the consultant might not know what the Department needs? It would not be appropriate to do this in the vast majority of cases but in some exceptional circumstances, it seems that the Department could be a bit more proactive with the consultants in trying to figure out what the story is and what it means for the applicant.