Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent)

I wish to raise the issue of the disabled persons' grant, the inequality in how it is provided nationally, and what I believe must happen to resolve that. It must be attached to the initiative that the Tánaiste announced last week, which is very welcome, regarding incentivising people to stay well at home instead of entering a nursing home.

One aspect is the provision of something like the disabled persons grant or the essential repairs grant, the two being interlinked. They are two thirds funded by the Exchequer, with one third coming from the local authority, which is really the Exchequer too. Meeting the demands sought very much depends on whether one's local authority can produce the missing third. I have produced a table per head of the population. The lowest amount paid per head is in Kildare, some €7.35 for every person in the county. That understates the situation since there has been very rapid population growth there and the figures do not include people who have not yet been counted in the census of population. At the other end of the spectrum is Leitrim which receives €100.72 per head for this scheme.

I know that one cannot take one fund in isolation and that one should consider the totality. However, if one telephones the local authorities at the bottom of the list, one typically hears that they have a problem in meeting the demands of people applying. That is certainly the case in Kildare where applications total €5.5 million, with €1.5 million necessary to meet them. That is having a real and definite impact on people. It is certainly having the opposite result to that which the Tánaiste sought in the home care programme that she launched last week. It is not only disproportionate. Some of the disability groups tell us that money is returned from some local authorities where it is not used.

If we can see a problem like that and the money is in a fund, we must consider the structural reason that the problem occurs in the first place, which is that the local authorities at the end of the funding stream find it impossible to produce the one third required of them tomeet the demands of people living in those counties.

I have encountered situations such as that of a couple where the man had retired to care for his wife who suffered from motor neurone disease, which is progressive. He was trying to keep her at home for as long as possible and maintain a high quality of life for her despite the degenerative illness. The disabled persons grant list was closed and even to install a ramp proved impossible for that couple. Such things should not happen in this day and age. People are not able to modify bathrooms to have a safer walk-in shower fitted. Those are typical of applications returned to people in Kildare who are told that they are not disabled enough and that they must be utterly disabled to qualify for funding.

It is really not fair that in one part of the country one can have that funded through a grant while in another one cannot because one's local authority cannot produce the missing third. The sorts of choices that must be made regarding the one third include not introducing traffic calming or augmenting water treatment systems. This scheme is competing with so many other necessary schemes that it should be nationally funded and locally administered. That is the only way to overcome the difficulty. The funding exists but is inappropriately dispersed throughout the country.

See this speech in context