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

We discussed this on Committee Stage and I have submitted another amendment, which attempts to take on board some of the defence the Government side gave when it came to the concerns that were raised by us at that stage. The Government said that there is, or can be, difficulty in getting qualified people to be medical assessors on a permanent, full-time basis, and for that reason they needed the option of getting people from employment agencies. Taking the Government in good faith in that regard, I have put forward an amendment that allows the Government that option, but only after the option of directly engaging people on a full-time, permanent basis has been exhausted. That is a fair compromise because it is not ideal that we should have agency people coming in. It can be more costly and is more haphazard because people are going in and out and not developing the necessary expertise.

Another issue I will raise in regard to some of the other amendments I have tabled is that we need some discussion about the medical qualifications of these assessors. Are they specialists? Are they people who have specialised, expert knowledge in the particular areas they are supposed to be dealing with? I suspect they are not. As we will discuss later, even worse is the fact that we often have unqualified, non-medical people as deciding officers, second-guessing qualified medical practitioners who give diagnoses on the care and support needs of people with disabilities, which is totally unacceptable. We will come to that in a minute.

At the very least, if the Government is saying that it is forced, in a non-ideal situation, to take agency people on for this staff sometimes, then it should only be as a last resort when the possibility of getting full-time, permanent and appropriately qualified people to make these medical assessments has been exhausted. Let us not forget, these applicants are very vulnerable, disabled people with real needs, who should be our absolute priority in this regard, never mind the need to have decently paid, proper jobs, for people performing this important task. My amendment is a fair attempt to deal with the Government's difficulty in getting medical assessors while prioritising the objective of getting full-time, permanent, directly employed people wherever possible.

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