Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)

It is just because we do have to declare. There are people I know and who are connected to me who are using home dialysis and are able to benefit from the existing system.

To my knowledge and looking at the HSE, there is no support. There is lots of training in terms of home dialysis and a lot of support, including online support, but there is no financial support for home dialysis. I recognise that this is a good thing that has been done. We can look at what is happening in terms of home dialysis and something that is probably reasonably new. The latest figures show that there are probably 360 people who are using home dialysis across the State. When we think about the population in the State and the number of people who are using home dialysis, it is actually great that there is a measure in our taxation code that supports them. However, some of them are not getting supported and that is the point I am making. I think the figures from the HSE identified that 16 children were included.

As I mentioned and the Minister acknowledged, there is a benefit to our hospital system. The cost, if you want to put a cost on this, is huge. The HSE estimates that somebody who is doing home dialysis - it does not or will not work for everybody - on average saves 150 trips to the hospital. That is just massive when we think of 150 trips per person in terms of the inconvenience, the cost of having to go and all of those issues. Where we have a code that can support people through taxation, there needs to be an alternative that supports people through direct payments. That is why I am raising this. There is a way to do this where it could be refundable, whether that is through the taxation code or otherwise. If it is not, and if the Minister is setting his face against that for his own reasons, then there has to be a recognition of the fact that, in our tax code, we have already recognised a number of health-related and disability-related issues. There are schemes in relation to the purchase of disability aids, but it is a VAT refund, so everybody is going to get it. That is great; there is nobody left behind in relation to that. Continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis, CAPD, is another example. However, the numbers we are discussing are small. We need to look at how we support those individuals who have the same issues and the same costs but because they are either not in employment or are in employment without a tax liability, they cannot be supported. I am asking the Minister as a senior person in government to bring that back, consider it and look to see whether it can be done within our tax code or whether there should be a complementary measure within the Department to make sure this cohort is supported. There was a recognition at a point in time, probably by Deputy Donohoe as Minister for Finance, to bring forward a measure to support these individuals. That recognition has to be there for some of those who are left behind. In this example, we are talking about very small numbers, but we are also talking about big costs for people whose lives have been upended because of the situation in which they find themselves.