Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent)

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate and thank Deputy Catherine Murphy for moving the motion on behalf of the Technical Group.

Some of the most common queries raised at my constituency office are from parents who are applying for the domiciliary care allowance. They have spent the duration of their children's lives in a struggle to get services for their children and in many cases they have had to struggle to arrange diagnoses so that they can finally prove their children have problems which the system failed or refused to recognise. It is vital that the system recognises these children and their families quickly. It is disheartening to see the level of upset which these families experience in their constant fight to get services and entitlements. No family would chose to have a child with special needs but they should not be forced to struggle against the social welfare, health and education system to provide a decent quality of life for their children.

A couple of weeks ago the Taoiseach stated to the House that children with autism can go to university and lead full lives. That rings hollow to the families who are struggling with a lack of services or a refusal to recognise their children's needs. The system should be reformed to ensure that families receive a fair hearing. It should not be assumed that they are trying to defraud the State or get a benefit to which they are not entitled. It should be assumed from the start that they need assistance and support from the Department of Social Protection. Such an assumption would completely change the atmosphere in which these families currently struggle. The Minister for Social Protection should change the system to ensure that families receive the support and protection they need from her Department rather than constantly struggling against the barriers it erects in their way. They should not have to incur expenses in getting expert opinion when their domiciliary care allowances come up for renewal but should instead be provided as a matter of right with reports from the health care providers who are already dealing with their children. That a departmental official could ask whether a child still has autism betrays a lack of understanding for what families are going through. The Department needs to recognise that. Families should not have to wait weeks or months for their appeals to be processed. I have attended oral hearings with families. It is heart-rending to observe the upset that parents experience in trying to justify their application for support. In fairness to the inspectors, many of them are similarly upset because they cannot understand how the Department can make these decisions.

Something must have gone badly wrong with the administrative system if more than 52% of appeals are successful. Unfortunately, the system appears to be designed to minimise the amount of money paid to families by making them struggle through bureaucratic procedures. The Minister needs to review the operation of the domiciliary care allowance. If it was transferred back to the Department of Health, there might be greater empathy with applicants. As part of that review, the application forms must also be reviewed. In many cases applicants do not understand the amount of information they need to give and the forms do not facilitate that. If at the start they were aware of the amount of information needed, they might be able to short-circuit the process and speed up decision-making.

These parents and children struggle throughout their lives and the system should be able to accommodate them in recognising that children have lifelong disorders and disabilities which are not there to be reviewed. If only parents thought that in two years' time their children would be better and would not need this anymore, they would hand back the domiciliary care allowance in the morning. The system needs to recognise that. When the Minister is carrying out the review I call on her to ensure the system becomes a caring system and not a blockage system.

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