Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

As the Deputy will recall, it is for that reason that after I became Minister - we have had a number of discussions on this - I set up the review group, which was chaired by Sylda Langford and included quite a number of parents and which involved carrying out a sampling exercise involving 1,000 parents. This included work on the domiciliary care allowance right down to redesigning the forms in a way that they would be much more parent-friendly.

The Deputy should remember that up to 2009, domiciliary care allowance was paid by the HSE. It then transferred over to the Department. Since it transferred from the HSE, the number of applications and the number of successful claims for DCA have gone up enormously. In 2013, for instance, under the new system, the success rate in terms of people applying increased to 73%.

One of the problems we have, which is why I drew attention to it in my reply, is incomplete medical evidence at the early stage of application. That is why we have provided, in particular for children with specific disorders, including children on the autism spectrum or the Asperger's spectrum, a specific form which would allow medical advisers as well as parents or guardians to put forward a much more detailed case than was the case in the past.

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