Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have a relatively brief point. I ask the Leader to raise, with the Minister for Health, I presume, the issue of the disabled drivers' medical board of appeal. If a person applies for disabled driver status and it is not granted automatically, there is an appeal mechanism in place. I have a letter here from the secretary to the disabled drivers' medical board of appeal thanking me for my letter supporting somebody's appeal. The person is appealing the process for not getting the status under the disabled drivers and disabled passengers tax concession scheme of 1994. The response said that there are a large number of appellants on the waiting list and the waiting time is in the order of seven months. Regardless of whether a person wins the appeal, I think "outrageous" is a reasonable word to use in terms of this wait for disabled drivers.

The people applying for it are not doing so frivolously and genuinely believe they are entitled to it. Under the regulations, perhaps some of them are not. Regardless of whether they are, they should know within a period much shorter than seven months. I am sure that Senator Dolan knows an awful lot more about this than I do, but I believe that seven months for any appeal process is wrong. I would like the Minister for Health, or whoever the responsible Minister is, to come before the House, tackle the issue and point out to us how he is going to deal with it and reduce that seven months to a more appropriate period of a couple of weeks or whatever it should be. If people are going to be granted the status and miss out on seven months, their quality of life is seriously affected. If they are not going to get it, they should at least know that and not have to wait seven months for it.