Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I compliment Deputy Billy Kelleher on tabling the motion. As I have only a few minutes to contribute, I will concentrate on one aspect of provision for the disabled, namely, the domiciliary care allowance. As the House is aware, the allowance is paid to the parents of children under the age of 16 years who suffer from a serious mental or physical disability to the extent that they need an inordinate amount of care to survive in ordinary society. In the past two years, approximately since the Minister, Deputy Joan Burton, took over in the Department of Social Protection, there has been a significant cutback in provision for those in receipt of domiciliary care allowance and this has been done by stealth. Two or three years ago approximately 65% of applicants for the allowance were successful. However, this figure has dropped to 35%. The number succeeding has dropped from two in three to one in three, although the rules have not changed and neither has the incidence of physical and mental disability among children under the age of 16 years. There is no evidence that fewer young people have autism; in fact, all of the evidence points in the other direction. What has changed? Why is only one in three applications being accepted now when the figure was two in three up until two years ago? If one was cynical, which, of course, I am not, one would say a directive must have come from on high to officials to reduce costs. It is the only possible explanation I can think of, but not being cynical, I will not say so.

One of the Minister's first acts on taking office was to get the Department to write to thousands of parents of children in receipt of domiciliary care allowance to ask them to justify why their child should still be entitled to receive the allowance. A number of the people concerned came to see me and I contacted the Department to ask what proof or evidence it wanted to receive. I was told the family doctor should certify it and that if people wanted to submit further evidence, so be it. What has happened in approximately 65% of cases in the country as a whole - I could instance a number of cases I have sent to the Minister - is that the family doctor has so certified and that people have also obtained reports from speech therapists, physical therapists and consultants to certify that not only is a particular child still entitled to receive the allowance but also that it is needed now more than ever. However, a faceless bureaucrat in the Department has written back to state they are being cut off. This is without interfacing with the child, meeting the family or knowing the circumstances involved. Somebody in the Department just ticks a box - I believe it is called a desktop review - and cuts off the allowance to a child. This is tantamount to the Department writing to the parents of a child suffering from a serious mental or physical disability, stating it notes what the experts and the family doctor have stated about the child needing the allowance now more than ever and that it believes the parents but that it has good news because, hey presto, it deems the child to be cured.

I am very glad civilisation has evolved in the past 2,000 years. We are now in the lead-up to Christmas and all remember the biblical tales of cripples who walked, deaf people who could suddenly hear and blind people who could suddenly see after the laying on of hands. As we have now evolved, one no longer needs to lay on hands or even needs to meet the child, as all one has to do is tick a box at a desk in the Department and state the child has been cured. This is a shabby, sordid, sneaky attack on some of the most vulnerable in the country and it is ironic it is happening under the aegis of a Minister of the Labour Party. I remember a time in this House when I was trying to introduce legislation for people with disabilities and subjected to a most horrendous campaign outside Leinster House driven, conceived and led by the Labour Party.

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