Ms Mary Higgins:

The next one I have up is the €15,000 limit. I think I did explain in the document how that came about. To give a potted history of it, the issue of expenditure referred to by Deputy Connolly was a matter of concern. It was not that we were spending the money but that we were spending so much money on so few people when there were so many more people who had yet to benefit from the fund or even apply to it. There was an issue for us in terms of the review we carried out in 2015 into the sustainability of the fund and ensuring that it would be there not just for the people who had already benefitted from it but those who had not yet applied to us. Another issue involved the fact that many applicants were telling us that they did not want education, which is fine because many survivors do not want it, but that the housing repairs, adaptations and improvements we could do were of no use to them because they were in rented accommodation and they wanted others. They wanted things like household goods such as fridges, settees, carpets, floor covering and decoration. That is what we were looking at when we carried out the review in 2016. The limit was introduced on the basis that we needed to introduce it otherwise all of it would be spent on a small number of people and we would not then be able to comply-----