Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The cross-border directive scheme has become more and more popular, there is a greater awareness of it and we all know of people who have availed of it. At present, in my reckoning from dealing with constituency cases, there is a three and half month delay in having reimbursement applications processed and approved, and payment made. We know many of the people who avail of the scheme are elderly and they have to borrow in many instances, be it from family or financial institutions, and they worry about the delay in getting reimbursement. There is an obvious need to devote more resources to this scheme to eliminate these delays, which are not acceptable.

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