Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

As the Deputy knows, it has been made absolutely clear to parents - it is a unique feature of the Irish system in regard to this allowance and to other medically-based allowances paid in respect of disability or invalidity - that under our system, we allow people to submit fresh medical evidence for review purposes at any stage.

We have discussed this before. If people immediately go to an appeal, the appeal process is statute based and inevitably takes more time. We have been reducing the times but the backlog I inherited, particularly from the Deputy's Government, was very significant.

See this speech in context