Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent)

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle. I am responding to amendments Nos. 101 and 103 and the adequacy of the service statement. I have listened attentively to what the Minister of State said. He is saying that everyone is entitled to an assessment, but that this is dependent on available resources for delivery and talks about good governance. As regards the latter, equity is an important part of good governance. I said yesterday that the needs are different in developing areas by virtue of the fact that these are greater. That is precisely the point with the disabled person's grants of which there is not good governance. In County Kildare some €5.70 per capita is transferred from the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government to deal with the disabled person's grants at a time when some councils are handing back money because they are not using all of it. The highest per capita amount paid to any county is €103 and there is every figure in between. I produced tables for myself to see what the overall picture looked like in terms of the differences in the transfer of funds between local authorities.

A man, whose wife has motor neurone disease, contacted me and said that he had retired a year early to care for her. It is a progressive disease involving wasting of the muscles for which the prognosis is poor. He wanted a ramp to give him some degree of comfort when moving her around. It is something of a struggle because he is not particularly young. He could not even apply to Kildare County Council for a disabled person's grant because the grant applications are closed. There is no money in Kildare. If he lived somewhere else, he could make an application. A complaint that is constantly made by disability groups is that not alone are the services not available in some places, they are patchy in others. I draw particular attention to this because good governance means that the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government should review this scheme so that it looks at the needs of the individual rather than the ability of a specific local authority to come up with one third of the funding. It is just an example of the type of problem that produces significant difficulties for people in being able to get the services to which they should be entitled.

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