Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

My question relates directly to the Minister's Department and policies. Last year, there was an outcry from families of children with special needs about the dramatic increase in the refusal of the domiciliary care allowance, a consequent alarming increase in the number of appeals and the waiting times for those appeals, which often went up to a year. In a parliamentary question I put to the Minister last week to which I received an answer, the same shocking pattern revealed itself when it came to applications for invalidity pensions. In 2009, 39% of applications were refused. In 2011 when the Government took office, the figure jumped to 69% while the figure in 2012 was 64%. As a result, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of appeals so that in 2012, there was a 700% increase in the number of appeals through which people had to go as opposed to 2009. That has led to the appeals office being completely overrun and unable to cope. Only one quarter of the 4,356 appeals lodged in 2012 were decided. This means that thousands of people with chronic illnesses and injuries have to wait up to and over a year to have their appeals heard for invalidity pension. There is widespread anecdotal evidence of similar patterns when it comes to applications for carer's allowance and disability allowance.

Why are the Minister's Department and medical assessors second-guessing consultants and GPs who are testifying to the fact that people are physically or mentally unable to work? Is she deliberately denying some of the most vulnerable people - ill people with chronic illnesses - their just entitlements? Where does this leave her constant protestations that she will defend the vulnerable, including people with special needs, when there is clear evidence of a systematic pattern on the part of her Government of denying vulnerable people their rightful entitlements and forcing them into situations of anxiety, desperation and suffering as a result of cuts she is imposing but which she dresses up as reform?

See this speech in context