Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

My question was a bit different from that. A lot of our councils are understaffed and the staff there and in social work teams are under huge pressure, especially with the housing crisis. This is not specifically about having someone to support an individual, although that is extremely important and I do not want to take away from it.

It is more about the additional weighting. In Galway, which is where I know best, we have two councils, namely, the city council and county council, but people often come in who have been five years on the list. At the moment, people need to have been about 11 years on the list. They fill out a HMD form and two healthcare professionals have to sign it. That just gives a different type of weighting for when they are considered. Having that additional weighting for a social welfare application is the theory behind it.