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

I do believe the Minister of State but I do not believe the Government's intent in terms of this legislation. We have all seen, in practice, what is going on. The Government needs to get its head around what is going on and the actual intention of this legislation. When one looks at this issue in the round one begins to wonder if the thought process behind this Bill is to shave a particular budget to cover the cost of the back-to-work family dividend. Whether or not this is the overall thinking behind this Bill, people who are vulnerable and disabled, who are entitled to care or support, are being refused it because of the default position of "if we can refuse them, we will refuse them." The people in FLAC are very reasonable. Under the principal Act, the term "relevant people" is defined as follows:

(4) For the purposes of subsection (1), a relevant person shall be regarded as requiring full-time care and attention where—

(a) the person has such a disability that he or she requires from another person— (i) continual supervision and frequent assistance throughout the day in connection with normal bodily functions, or

(ii) continual supervision in order to avoid danger to himself or herself, (b) the person has such a disability that he or she is likely to require full-time care and attention for at least 12 consecutive months, and

(c) the nature and extent of the person’s disability has been certified in the prescribed manner by a registered medical practitioner.

That is positive. To get support a person needs only to meet those criteria and the medical practitioner's certification of eligibility is taken as fact. However, this legislation as drafted seeks to tighten up this provision in line with the practice over the past few years of deciding officers second-guessing doctors. Unqualified, non-medical people are second-guessing the diagnoses of general practitioners and medical professionals in order to deny people supports to which they are entitled.

Interestingly, our amendments, which seek to provide that a general practitioner's diagnosis be accepted, have been ruled out of order. They were also ruled out of order on Committee Stage. When we asked on Committee Stage why they had been ruled out of order we were told it was because they would result in a charge on the Exchequer. What does this mean? It means that budgetary constraints are overriding medical diagnoses. That is clearly apparent. The fear of the Department is that if the word of GPs in regard to whether a person needs care or support is accepted this will impact on its budget. This is not the basis on which care and supports should be provided. It should be the case that where a doctor certifies that a person requires care or support that support is provided. This legislation provides that somebody else, who is not a doctor or a qualified professional, can disagree with the GP and not provide the support. Applications are being delayed in the hope that some of the applicants will go away out of frustration, which many of them do. This is what this legislation seeks to do. There is no doubt about that.

I propose to press this amendment because too many people are suffering unnecessarily as a result of this.

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