Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will divert slightly from the debate and ask a question. How does independent politics work for citizens in this House? As regards the provisions the Minister has put forward in this Bill, the value of it will become eminently clear.

Social welfare assessment schemes used to take into account any and all revenues when considering applications for social welfare, working family payments and supplementary allowances. As a result, households in receipt of social welfare supports last year could not play any active part in trying to offer accommodation to anyone during the present housing crisis. My colleagues in the Regional Group of Independents and others presented a range of policy initiatives to the Government last year as part of our stance to support and deliver progressive politics. As part of our eight policy initiatives, which I am happy to say have now been almost entirely activated by the Government, we called for an initiative to allow for the expansion of the rent-a-room relief scheme to include social welfare recipients, enabling them to lease a spare room in their residences so as to increase the national stock of badly needed accommodation space. The Government's agreement to the implementation of this relief one month after it was proposed has meant that for a period of two years following the policy amendment, individuals who chose to rent a room in their house could claim up to €14,000 per annum in disregarded income for the purposes of social welfare means assessment. For households with retired owner-occupiers, this initiative means that families could avail of an additional weekly rental income of €269 per week without any effect on their non-contributory state pension. It also means the benefits applying to a spouse or adult dependent of a contributory pensioner were not affected. However rental income was being considered in a means test for those on means-tested welfare payments which effectively ruled them out of the scheme. Again, our group called for a re-evaluation of the scheme to take account of those in receipt of supplementary benefits and medical card supports. I and my colleagues are heartened today to see part of the Bill proposes the extension of the rent-a-room relief scheme to people receiving social welfare payments who rent out a room so they will not lose supplementary benefits and medical card supports. The Government recognising the Regional Group initiatives is a clear sign of the value of independent voices in this Chamber, representing the population at large.

A second provision of the Bill is to provide for an amendment to current legislation to enable more management of and access to medicinal products by the Minister. I have not read the Bill in detail, but I hope this will allow the Minister to look widely and favourably at a significant number of applications to the HSE via the Health Products Regulatory Authority, HPRA, medicines review group every year, especially in the area of orphan diseases. The Minister will be aware that a number of drugs have come onto the scheme, perhaps more than 150 in recent years. Another 150 are probably out there for specific groups of patients. This will always create a difficult economic question. We understand the conundrum if you have one patient whose treatment might cost €0.5 million in a year and you can perhaps service ten patients for €50,000 a year each. However, this affects a small number of patient groups. I met a gentleman earlier who is trying to figure out how to access orphan drug schemes and his team is only treating five patients at present. They cannot see a pathway. I heard the Tánaiste mention in the House that €20 million had been ring-fenced for the provision of orphan disease medication, assuming the medicines get reimbursement approval, but I understand that money is no longer on the table and if it is found at all, it will be found through health savings delivered somewhere else. The Minister and I both know it is very hard to create health savings in the present system. I ask the Minister to have a significant look at the orphan disease space. It involves a small number of patients. I understand there are developments in this area. I would be happy to try to support it. I know of a number of companies, as the Minister probably does, which are trying to access that programme. We have small numbers of patients, but some of them are suffering terribly. One particular disease affects very young children in their growth phase and if it does not get interdicted they do not grow, with all the obvious problems of dwarfism and so forth. That is just one other aspect.

I commend the Minister on taking on the initiatives we proposed last year and I hope he will adopt the one I suggested now.

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