Mr. R?n?n Hession:

I will go through the questions to help the Senator and will ask Ms Hurley to chip in on anything on her side. Of course, if I miss anything I will be happy to come back to it. The first issue the Senator raised was the cost of caring for somebody who has autism. There has been engagement with carers' groups on the cost of disability and many of the costs that might arise. When it is a younger person with a disability, the costs actually arise with the carer, so it is a question of how that is recognised. Responses to that go across a range of different areas.

The report did identify that income supports have a role to play but that will not be the only part of it. There is an issue if those costs are around, for example, people who are waiting for long periods to get assessments done in the public system going privately. That is probably what the Senator is alluding to in terms of the community welfare service. Then there are other costs. We have the domiciliary care allowance which has increased and is not means tested. That is payable up to age 16 years. We have also made some moderation with that in terms of young babies born with problems. A mix of responses is required. For carers themselves, we have moved the means test for carer's allowance. The disregards for carers are now at €350. They went from €350 for a single person and from €665 to €750 for a couple. You can be at about €39,000 before the means test affects you. There has been increased availability of support for carers. The carer's support grant is at the highest ever level at €1,850. I have outlined the various budget measures. All those are supposed to try to mitigate some of the costs and the general cost-of-living pressures that people are facing. The Department will need to work with other Departments but the services need to be there. There are transport issues and issues around medicines, appliances and housing, as the Senator said, but it needs to be whole-of-government and that is why it is being dealt with in a whole-of-government way. We are certainly doing our bit or at least we are trying to move things on.

Ms Hurley might want to talk on the early engagement letter. My understanding was that the wording was very carefully screened and tested with groups. It has been a while since I looked at the letter but the word activation is not in it, as far as I know. It is worded in a very sensitive way and we spent a lot of time on it. It was not just something that we drafted and maybe did a round of emails. There were a lot of long discussions and much of the time was spent to try to get that right. I am sure that even with that, no matter how sensitively it is phrased, putting myself in the shoes of the customer, if I receive a letter from the Department of Social Protection about my payment that mentions work, I can imagine my response. In some cases, perhaps that is why services such as EmployAbility are attractive for people or other local area services. I know there were other groups that were before the committee in a similar area. If it does not have a harp on the envelope, in other words, people can say that it is not about their payment but it is really about a service that they are getting. We very much view it as a service that people get and increasingly with the language of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Persons with Disabilities, people are not just saying that it is a service that is available to them but that it is something they are entitled to. They are saying: "This is a right of mine. I am entitled to expect a high standard of service. What can you do to help me in terms of my needs?"

On the community welfare services, CWS, we have additional needs payments that are flexible but there is a limit to how far they go. We have had this back and forth before about the sweeper role and to what extent that payment can cover gaps in the system. I am just cautious about giving the impression that other grants are not in place or are not meeting the needs of people from other Departments, and that we are suddenly pulled in to that. At the same time, we do try to take a person-centred approach to what the person needs and to try to be helpful where ever we can. Housing is by far the biggest category in additional needs payments, whether that is deposits, kit-outs and repairs. Although there is a huge amount of focus on fuel, heating etc. it is only about 3% or 4% of what the additional needs payments do. The vast bulk of it is housing expenses.

There was a question about filling out forms. That is something we are trying to work on. We sit down with the various carers' organisations and other stakeholder groups to see what we can do to simplify the requirements to make it as easy as possible for the customer. We have had an internal staff project looking at what we do for customers with higher needs and what level of wraparound we need to give. It is the nature of our work that people contact our Department when their life is in difficulty, sometimes unexpectedly. A person can need a bit of help and support. Even for those of us inside the system, there is huge complexity so we can imagine how difficult it can be so we do try to help people with that.

The processing times have improved greatly. For carer's allowance it used to be that because of the documentary requirements there was always pressure to meet the targets but the targets across the caring disability schemes are now in a very good place and there has been a lot of work behind the scenes to make that happen. Hopefully that is helpful to people.

I will ask Ms Hurley to reply to the questions on EmployAbility, and she can add to or correct anything I have said.