Ms Clare Duffy:

Ms Cox referred in her opening statement to people paying privately. We look at waiting lists and see there are a hundred and something thousand children on them. That is frightening but that is not even the reality. The vast majority of families I engage with have found the money from somewhere to pay for the assessment. They do not have the money. They have gone to the credit union or got it from family to pay for the assessment. The waiting lists for the assessment are not even the full picture. That is really frightening.

The work the Vincentian Partnership for Social Justice did for us last year using data from before the cost-of-living crisis showed, as Ms Cox mentioned, families caring for a child with a profound intellectual or physical disability incur an additional €244 per week more than I do, as a non-caring household. That is more than the rate of carer's allowance. Sr. Bernadette and her colleagues in the Vincentian partnership found much of that €244 is made up by families being forced to pay for things that are, officially, publicly provided. The adequacy of carer's allowance is linked to that. We do not have universal basic services. It is all going on supplementing that.