Ned O'Sullivan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I was not in the Chamber yesterday, but I would like to commend Senator Leyden on the trenchant manner in which he raised the issue of the now infamous Trichet letter to Brian Lenihan on the eve of the bailout, which clearly precipitated that bailout, no matter which government was in office at the time. The Ombudsman made it quite clear she saw no valid reason for continuing to keep this letter secret from the public. I believe there can be no bank inquiry of any sort without this letter coming into the public domain. I would also like to hear from the Governor of the Central Bank, Mr. Honohan, in regard to this matter. I would like to know what level of involvement he had with the original letter. Did he see it and was he part of it and did it in any way inform the statement he made regarding the troika coming into this country? That statement was greatly welcomed at the time by the media, but it is now being looked at differently. I wonder now how helpful his intervention was at that time.

I have raised the matter of the procedures for assessing those claiming social welfare benefits on medical grounds, such as invalidity pension, previously. A response to a question raised in the Dáil recently revealed that over 70% of refusals are successfully appealed. This is a very high success rate on appeal and one can only imagine that the original examination codes must be very stringent. What instructions do medical personnel receive from the Department regarding these examinations? I do not cast aspersions on their professionalism, but what are the criteria under which they operate when there is such a high level of refusal, yet such a high level of successful appeals?

Recently, a constituent of mine had been two and a half years waiting before being successfully awarded a pension on appeal. He was a self-employed man who worked hard all his life and never took a shilling from the State. Anybody would know he was entitled to an invalidity pension, but for two and a half years he was dragged through every sort of delaying procedure imaginable, until finally, after what was described to me by a professional appeals agents two years of anguish, he was successful. This is not good enough. This delay was a false saving for the Government, because this individual and many like him will receive their full entitlement, backdated to the original application date. I call for the Minister to come to the House to outline exactly what is going on.