Ms Jacqui Browne:

I thank the Deputy. He has reflected very well the support we feel we are getting from members of this committee. That is hugely appreciated by the members of the Irish Thalidomide Association. I assure him that his kind words of support are appreciated by all of us. I agree with everything he has said. All the questions that have come from members of the committee have illustrated very clearly that there are significant gaps in the intersections between Departments that must be addressed. We are so siloed in this country. Everything is siloed into different Departments and never the twain shall meet. That is a big issue and we are the ones who lose out around the pots of money.

The core concern for thalidomide survivors is in the area of transport. The Deputy has already highlighted some of the issues there.

Housing is another issue, as is health. The means testing is disingenuous. It flies in the face of what we were promised in 1975 by the then Minister for Health, Brendan Corish. He said that all our needs would be met irrespective of means. Some of the meagre allowances we get are tax-free under the Finance Acts. Logically, if that income is tax-free then why do we have to go through means testing at another level? There is a total conflict there that needs to be resolved. Thalidomide survivors are a very small and unique group. There will not be more of us. It happened during a very specific period of time, three or four years in Ireland, so it is not like there are 2,000 or 5,000 people behind us waiting to come in the door. For the sake of 40 people I strongly ask the committee to consider calling for the removal of means testing for thalidomide-specific grants, be those related to housing, health or transport. That would be huge.

I will make an observation, in order to emphasise that are need are unique. This is based on my personal experience, although I do not often talk about personal experiences in public forums because my personal life is my personal life. I had a massive fight over ten years ago, which boiled down to trying to gain access to something that is generally available to the population at large, namely, the treatment abroad scheme. I have had several surgeries over my lifetime but this time I needed extremely complex orthopaedic surgery as I had been carrying a number of fractures for a number of months. I ended up visiting more than 13 different surgeons in this country. Every single one of them agreed what needed to be done but none of them would touch me because they did not have the expertise and the surgery would be beyond them. They said I needed to go abroad. I went to Germany and found a team there that would resolve the issue and offered to do this surgery - or surgeries, as it turned out. I came back to Ireland and applied for the treatment abroad scheme but I was refused. I was turned down. I ended up paying for that myself privately out of my own pocket. Being the dog with a bone that I am, I pursued it after I came back, while I was also quite ill. There is the trauma of dealing with your own health and the trauma of dealing with the State and trying to justify what you believe is your right to the treatment abroad scheme. That scheme is open to any member of the public, not just thalidomide survivors. It eventually got settled but it went all the way to the High Court. However, it did not end up in court because as usual, after both the State and I having spent an awful lot of money, it settled. I just wanted to share that simple example. Why do we still have to keep fighting and fighting? It is exhausting.