Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This has come to my attention because a number of people have contacted me recently who are being means-tested for their carer's allowance. Naturally, some of them are worried, as they would be when they are being means-tested. Anecdotally, from speaking to a number of these people, they believe this is occurring across the board and that a very large of people are being tested, perhaps more than the ordinary review of means test. Will the Minister confirm or deny that? In any event, in a number of these cases, the individuals in question are probably on the margins of the current threshold. Some of them potentially exceed the threshold due to a change in circumstances but would be under the new thresholds that will come in next June. This could lead to a perverse outcome, whereby somebody's allowance is cut off or reduced in December or January and that person is then brought back into the fold in June. In the past, in areas such as maintenance for single parents, the Minister was able to make changes to how payments operated. Would it be possible for the Department to consider, in cases where people might be disqualified but will fall under the new thresholds being introduced in June, not cutting them off for the intervening period?

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