Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

If the Department is not getting the information it requires the first time, and many of the people who are applying for the allowance have their own challenges in life, are not super literate and do not read law, I would think that quite a bit could be done to make the application form more useful in terms of what is required from the professional and what is required from the parent. In many cases, when a parent comes to a politician, you advise them to write a diary of what their life is like and then get professional back-up to validate that that is true. That is weighing down the process and tying people up in a lot of red tape. Some people are better able for it than others. We have to always remember, in welfare, that not only are we dealing with very vulnerable children, but in many cases we are dealing with vulnerable parents.

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