Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)

Ba mhaith liom fáilte a chur roimh an rún seo atá os ár gcomhair inniu mar go bhfuil sé tábhachtach go ndéanann muid plé ar an cheist seo. Táim i gcoinne an leasaithe atá curtha os comhair na Dála ag an Rialtas ar an cheist seo mar measaim nach bhfuil an Rialtas ag glacadh leis go bhfuil botún á dhéanamh agus go bhfuil an córas, mar atá sé faoi láthair, maidir le domiciliary care allowance míchothrom.

To prevent some Government Deputies from putting words in my mouth, as they have done in the past, I will begin by acknowledging that the Department does need to employ control measures, including assessment and review procedures, to ensure domiciliary care payments are made only for eligible children. I would say the same for any other social welfare payment. A certain degree of control is required to ensure nobody is in receipt of a payment he or she should not receive. However, the current application, assessment and review processes are not fair. They place parents under undue stress that could and should be avoided, particularly given the circumstances. As my colleague Deputy Sandra McLellan indicated last night, Sinn Féin welcomes the spirit behind the Technical Group motion, although we do not agree with all of the specific proposals.

The domiciliary care allowance scheme requires significant reform and Sinn Féin has proposals of its own in that regard. I have put some of those suggestions to the Minister, Deputy Burton, and last week I put some of them to the Minister of State at the Department of Health, Deputy Kathleen Lynch. In the past weeks and months I have highlighted these issues and I am happy to be able to say that some of my suggestions have been taken on board by the Minister and the Department. Notably, I recommended during debate on Priority Questions recently that the notice period for the review needed to be significantly extended. I am glad she has now arranged for that.

I note from the Minister's speech last night that from now on, claimants are to be informed of any scheduled review date at the commencement of their claim. This is welcome. In future, when people's claim is accepted, they will be told whether to expect a review and given an approximate date for the review. However, the Bill does not address the fears growing among the 24,000 parents already in receipt of the payment. As I said to the Minister of State last week during a Topical Issue debate on this issue, I took some time to peruse the on-line discussion forums for parents of children with special needs. I strongly suggest that Ministers, backbenchers and Deputies should do likewise. The issues of domiciliary care allowance applications, reviews and appeals are hot topics on forums like MagicMum.com,rollercoaster.ie and various other Facebook causes pages. The level of both confusion and fear to which these reviews give rise is something of which the Minister should take heed and to which she should respond. The fear is fed by the unfairness and the lack of transparency in the system currently. It is also fed by confusion. Some people seem to think everybody will be reviewed imminently and assume that every review will result in the withdrawal of payment. This incorrect assumption requires a response, but it has arisen due to the fact that the system is not as transparent as it should be.

I suggest the Minister should arrange for a letter to be sent to all domiciliary care allowance recipients, informing them whether a review has been recommended by a medical doctor who decided their cases. If so, they should be informed when that review is scheduled to arise. The letter should also include advice on what supporting evidence, letters or reports should be gathered in advance of the review and advice on writing a diary of the extra care needs of their children. This is a simple message to go out in 24,000 letters and it is not beyond the Department to do that in order to allay the fears of the many parents who have contacted me and many other Deputies.

The Government amendment to the motion and the Minister's speech last night seem to suggest the Government thinks the domiciliary care scheme and the procedures around it are fine as they are and that the small steps that have been taken with regard to notice period and the like are all that are required in terms of review. The Government states that the application and assessment process are equitable and fair, but the tone suggests that the review the Minister suggested in her contribution may not be as genuine a review as suggested and may not be a genuine effort to ensure the scheme is fair and transparent to all. Her conclusions appear to be pre-drawn, which would be wrong. Is her review just another fig leaf to cover another government failure. Hopefully not.

The amendment and the Minister's speech also fail to address a point I raised last week with regard to domiciliary care allowance being cut off while individual reviews are still in progress. It has been brought to my attention that due to a backlog of reviews, a number of domiciliary care payments have been cut off before the Department reviews have been completed. That is a scandal. The parents had been written to and told the review was to take place and they were asked to submit their forms and supporting documentation. They complied with this, but when the notice period concluded, their payment was cut off, although the Department had not yet fully assessed their documents. This is a serious concern and indicates that the overriding concern of the Department may be the need to reduce costs or spending on this scheme and as a result fair procedures and the needs of the disabled children are falling second to this. Surely, any Minister or government would agree that no payment should be in advance of the completion of a review. This is a simple request to which I hope the Minister will agree.

In addition, I strongly urge the Minister to ensure that no domiciliary claim in payment is stopped without the Department first meeting the claimant and affording him or her an oral hearing. When I suggested this to the Minister previously, she - purposely I suspect - misunderstood my meaning. I do not suggest that the Department's medical officers should take on direct responsibility for diagnosing or clinically assessing the children. Rather, I suggest that no claim should be cut off without the parent being offered an oral hearing with a deciding officer and given the opportunity to explain in person the additional care needs of his or her child.

The guidelines for deciding officers are a problem and need to be changed. First, the normal age of attainment lists do not go beyond four years and this is something to which I will return at a later dater. Second, the two lists in appendix 8 of diagnoses that are more or less likely to give rise to eligibility seem to create unfair presumptions in the minds of deciding officers. This means that parents of children with certain diagnoses, including most forms of autism, have a higher barrier to jump to prove eligibility than a child with an equivalent level of care needs but a different diagnosis. The Minister denied, in response to parliamentary questions I put, that appendix 8 is unfair. However, subsequently classic autism was shifted from one list to another, a tacit acknowledgement that the list is unfair. It is only a matter of time before somebody successfully convinces the courts to make the Minister eat her words on this. Therefore, I implore her to save these families the heartache and to reform the system now of her own volition because it is the right thing to do.

As mentioned, Sinn Féin does not fully agree with a number of proposals in the motion moved by the Technical Group. I do not have the time to go into these now, but I will inform Deputy Murphy so that she understands my concerns. Given the Minister's speech last night, I cannot support the Government amendment.

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