Mark Wall (Kildare South, Labour)

In our discussions last night on the social welfare Bill, I asked the Minister about increasing the eligibility of the DCA from the age of 16 to 18. I also mentioned difficulties a lot of families were having with this particular application. In his reply today, the Minister mentioned the criteria of "care and attention required by the child compared to another child of the same age". This is so hard for a parent to get their head around. Some of the applications are going to a GP who has not seen the child. The GP is filling out the form, ticking the matrix box, and putting down that the child is okay. This goes back to a discussion I had with the Minister about appeals. It is when people get one-to-one meetings with the person across a desk that they are able to describe what is happening on a daily basis in their families. We need to look at this again. I appreciate that the Minister has looked at it but we need to look at the application form. It is way too restrictive. We need to encourage people to look at those 60% of appeals that have been successful and encourage people to do a day-to-day diary of how this affects their family, day in and day out. That is where we need to get to. I appeal to the Minister to go back and look at the restrictive nature of this form.

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