Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is a cross-departmental report so it involves my Department, the Minister of State for disability issues and the Minister for Health. There are four big ones in my Department. We have already done the one on the free travel pass. That has already been implemented and provides for five years. The one on the requirement that the work be rehabilitative has effectively been done on an administrative basis but is in the legislation we will discuss shortly. The third one is the guarantee that if a person tries out work and it does not work out, they will have their disability allowance reinstated. In theory, this has already been done but people do not seem to believe it so there is a bit of work to be done there. The fourth one, which relates to the medical card and is the most important issue, is not under my Department's remit. The biggest fear people with disabilities have is that they will lose their medical card if they take up work. I know the Minister for Health has committed to increasing the income limits significantly so that people's fears in that regard will be allayed. Once we have that done, and we hope to do it this year, we will run an information campaign advising people with disabilities as to what has changed and how work might now pay for them.

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