Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

I thank the Deputy for his comments. When the Joint Committee on Social Protection recommences, this may be a matter that the Deputy, with all his experience, can raise for discussion.

There are 1,926 recipients of disability allowance aged between 16 and 18. This represents about 1.9% of the total number of people receiving disability allowance. The total spend on disability allowance for people between 16 and 18 is €18.8 million. As the Deputy said, it is a significant amount of money. One must also take account of the projected increase in the number of recipients. We are talking about the difference between paying the domiciliary care allowance until the child concerned reaches the age of 18 and the cost of transferring people to disability allowance at age 16.

Any change to the qualifying age would affect new claimants only - that is, existing claimants would continue to receive disability allowance even if they are under 18. Domiciliary care allowance will be paid up to age 18; currently, as the Deputy said, it ceases at age 16. There are currently 3,600 children of domiciliary care allowance recipients who are aged 14 or 15, and all of these claimants would migrate to disability allowance on reaching the age of 16. I would be concerned if there were a disincentive to a child involved staying on in school, education or training. This is a sensitive issue and should be discussed at greater length, perhaps at committee level when they have been established.

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