Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The housing adaptation grant scheme allocates housing aid for older people and for people with disability and mobility aid grants. The grants are available when changes need to be made to a home to make it suitable for a person with a physical, sensory or intellectual disability or a mental health difficulty to live there. The grant can help people make changes and adaptations to their home by, for example, making it wheelchair accessible, extending it to create more space or adding a ground-floor bathroom or stairlift.

The Government recently announced funding for 2019 of €71.25 million nationally for the housing adaptation grant for older people and people with a disability living in private houses. This included an allocation of €1.4 million to Donegal County Council for 2019. The funding was for two separate grants, however, which was not made clear in a reply to my recent parliamentary question on the issue. The problem since cuts to funding were made since 2010 during the peak of the recession is that local authorities were running into deficits because the Government never matched the funding required for the grants. Donegal County Council spent faster than the money was coming in from the Government, which put the council in a crisis where grants were severely restricted and as a result the criteria were changed to restrict the number of people who could qualify. Furthermore, it meant that a hierarchy of illnesses emerged for applicants, where only those with the most severe of disabilities were eligible while others had to be adjudicated on.

This was all done as a way to manage local government funding rather than effectively manage the needs of people with a disability. Money was available to be spent accordingly, such as on social housing rents, but this was not done. Over the years, the local authority reduced funding for other grants such as for non-essential repairs. A domino effect resulted in the continual curtailing of funding and other services to maximise the use of the limited money available for the housing adaptation grant. The council tried to facilitate the same number of people but each person ended up receiving much less. It was also a way of satisfying councillors and their demands to ensure that the grants would be made available to people who needed them.

I was initially supportive of the Bill until I examined it and realised that it will change the process by placing an additional onus on the applicant and moving the burden of proof away from the local authorities and towards the individual. Currently, the council sends someone to check the layout of the work in the applicant's home and send an application to the occupational therapist, who then decides whether works are required to adapt the home adequately for the applicant. An added complication is there are not enough occupational therapists within the HSE, which adds to delays in application waiting times. I wonder whether the Bill is an attempt to free up the HSE of increased demand by restricting the number of successful applicants through placing the burden on the individual with a disability. It is unclear whether the Bill fails to address the existing burden of proof imbalance or whether it might be a way of trying to manipulate the system, but at least Fianna Fáil recognises that the system is broken.

I will not, at this time, support the Bill because it will bring greater hardship to individuals with a disability seeking a housing adaptation grant. We need increased funding and a move towards transferring the burden of proof from applicants to local authorities in order that disability supports and local supports, in general, will be viewed as a human right.

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