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

I will absolutely consider the proposal the Deputy has made. It has to be done in the context of the budget and the HSE service plan, and we will have to see whether his costings are correct because proposals that do not stand up and costings that are not correct do not merit much consideration. We will certainly examine what is being proposed.

In terms of what was announced in the budget, as the Deputy mentioned it, the budget provides an extra €75 million for disability services next year. A reduction in the prescription charge of 50 cent for everyone under 65 kicks in in a few weeks time. An additional 1,000 special needs assistants will ensure that people with disabilities get the educational opportunities they deserve and there will be 100 extra special education teachers. A €5 increase in disability allowance and a €5 increase in the carer's allowance are kicking in in March. We have secured additional funding for the decision support service, empowering people with disabilities to make their own decisions, so they do not have others making decisions for them. There will also be an extra €5 million for housing adaptation grants because, if people are going to stay in their own homes. Very often those homes need to be adapted to enable them to do so, and there was an announcement on that recently. In addition, in the next few weeks the Minister of State, Deputy Finian McGrath, will make an announcement on personalised budgeting and the progress we are making on that, giving more families the power to decide how the money is spent on their own care. Issues such as the number of home help hours, home care packages and personal assistant hours are all matters for the HSE service plan, which is yet to be finalised.

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