Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We all accept family members and carers do a huge level of work, save the State a great deal of money, and facilitate people to live in their own homes and not in residential care or nursing homes. I have been canvassing lately and, judging by that and calls to my office, a large number of people are irate about how long it takes to get an adaptation grant or a disabled person's grant, and sometimes the amounts do not cover the work that is needed. We are not meeting these people where we need to. Louth County Council has told us it is suspending receipt of applications for various disabled persons' grant schemes due to vast oversubscription which exceeds both budgets and capacity to manage and process applications. That means we have neither the money nor the resources. We need to involve the HSE and ensure there is a review, possibly of the criteria and so on. We are failing a huge number of people and we really need to deal with this.

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