Labhrás Ó Murchú (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister. She is right in setting out her stall and pointing out the resources being made available. In fairness, the Minister has a particularly good track record in making a valiant effort on behalf of the less favoured members of society.

I compliment the Independent Senators who tabled the motion. It is an exceptionally comprehensive motion. It is not over-packaged. It deals only with the facts. It is not trying to score points. It is driven by goodwill and compassion. That is the reason I am disappointed with the Government amendment, not for its length - that is not relevant - but an opportunity has been lost to engage with the motion before us.

This may not be the norm but we are not living in normal times and that is why a motion of this kind was relevant. It is accepted that if something is not working satisfactorily one has two options, either restructure it or scrap it and replace it with something else. From what I could see this evening, there was not one speaker on the other side of the House who felt comfortable in speaking against the motion. The reason is that they are practitioners on the ground and know that what is in the motion is correct and relevant and requires urgent attention. The figures speak for themselves. Leaving aside the bigger figures for disability allowance where there are more than 4,000 appeal applications outstanding, there are hundreds of full-time carers, disability allowance people and people with long-term illnesses, who are waiting more than a year for a response. The only word that could apply to many of those people is "destitution", because they may not have the wherewithal or the money to survive. They are using a begging bowl with the family or somebody else in order to have the bare necessities for existence. That is where the debate has to start. I accept we are holding on to some of the deciding officers, who would have been retiring, for 18 months. I do not genuinely believe that is the answer to where we are. I do not mean this in a derogatory sense but it strikes me as a sticking plaster response to a major problem.

In the first instance we should have an independent appeals body. It is not because we are casting aspersions on anybody in the Department but the mere fact that it is independent means it has always built in an integral advocacy that may not be intended but it does exist with independent entities. That is important. It is vital that an appellant has the right to an oral hearing. The Minister makes a point for the right reason that it is due to the lack of information provided. Many of the people we are talking about do not understand the system, and did not have access to primary advice when that was required and certainly could not pay for that advice, legal or otherwise. They may have difficulty due to their physical ailment in putting down on paper the information required. When they go to a general practitioner it is a last resort because they see him or her in a friendly or professional sense. The letter from the general practitioner may not be wonderful in the context of providing evidence to set aside or uphold an appeal. The people we are dealing with are the most vulnerable in society. The motion draws heavily on research and the FLAC report. I did not hear anybody dispute the information put forward. Unless radical decisions are made to alter the system we may sideline some of the statistics or put them under another heading but from a human point of view that will not help the people concerned. I sat on the other side of the House and made exactly the same points then. We are living at a time when we have to do business in a different way. When Members who have no political axe to grind table a motion in the way it has been proposed, there should have been another methodology of dealing with it rather than putting the roadblock of an amendment, which asks people to sing from the same hymn sheet but not this evening.