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

I thank the Deputy for raising this question and reminding us of the day that is in it. I am not in a position to comment on individual cases. I do not have the information to hand and, for reasons of privacy, I should not do so anyway. If the Deputy wants to pass that on to my office or that of the Minister of State with responsibility for disability affairs, I will certainly have it examined. We absolutely acknowledge that there are unacceptable delays for people waiting for their assessment of needs. With regard to what we have been doing, to give a few examples, the Deputy mentioned that after decades of delays under many previous parties that served in government, we have now passed a Dáil resolution to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The Minister of State, Deputy Finian McGrath, will travel to New York to deposit the instrument of ratification in the period ahead. We also made a major change relating to medical cards. The Deputy will know that for years, particularly when other parties were in power, people with disabilities, particularly children, had to fight for their medical cards. We changed the law last year to ensure that any child with a severe disability in receipt of the domiciliary care allowance had a medical card as a right, irrespective of their parents' income. Some 10,000 additional medical cards were provided that way and 40,000 children no longer faced reviews of their medical cards. The Deputy will recall that the Government led by the party opposite took €11.50 a week from people with disabilities and carers. We have started to reverse those cuts. The first reversal was last year and the second reversal will happen next week, when there is a €5 per week increase in the disability allowance and carer's allowance. We intend to fully reverse those cuts to people's welfare payments in the next budget, and more. We fully reversed the cuts to the respite care grant and, later this year, we will extend the doctor visit card to all carers in receipt of carer's allowance.

See this speech in context