Ms Sarah O'Connell:

Yes. That is one excuse that is often used. There is illness benefit, which is not means-tested, and there is disability allowance. They are the two main benefits people are applying for. When people apply for disability allowance, a lot of the time the reason for rejection that is used is that long Covid is not considered a disability, but if you look at the definition of disability allowance on gov.ie, it covers illness. It does not have to be something that is declared as a disability. It is important to say also that, as far as we can see, there has been no direction from the Government to the Department of Social Protection to expect an influx of claims because we have an influx of newly chronically ill people. These are really ill people. They are genuinely ill. Rather, what is happening is they are trying to stick to existing quotas of approvals and denials and people are having to battle and battle.