Vol. 405 No. 9
13 Mr. Browne (Carlow-Kilkenny) asked the Minister for Social Welfare the reason a recipient of disabled person's maintenance allowance (details supplied) in County Carlow who is in residential care will not be allowed a free travel pass; and if he will make a statement on the matter.
People who are in receipt of disabled person's maintenance allowance from a health board are entitled to free travel. I am extending the scope of the free travel scheme as from April next to include people formerly in receipt of disabled person's maintenance allowance who lost their entitlement to the allowance upon entering health board residential care.
On the basis of information from the health board, the person concerned is not, and has never been, in receipt of the allowance and he is not therefore entitled to free travel. The question of extending the scheme to cover persons in residential care who did not previously have free travel would have financial implications and would have to be considered in a budgetary context.
(Carlow Kilkenny): Will the Minister agree that at this stage the Department of Social Welfare should be called the Department of anomalies and oxymorons? This person is so severely handicapped that he is in residential care as a Down's Syndrome patient. If he was not as severely handicapped he would be at home and would have free travel. Is it not time that all these contradictions were taken on board by an enlightened Minister like himself? The Minister said he did not get an allowance before. The patient is mentally handicapped. He is released every second Thursday of the month and brought back on the following Monday. His widowed mother either has to drive him there or pay for his transport. Would the Minister not agree that in those circumstances he should see the person gets free travel and do justice to him?
As the Deputy says, every time you take a further step you find anomalies arising like the one the Deputy has discovered in this case where a person was never a recipient of DPMA, therefore he never came into the free travel scheme and has not to date been in the free travel scheme. We have extended free travel to cover such people even when they have lost DPMA by going into residence. We have also provided for companion travel, for a companion to travel with the person free, so I think the Deputy will agree that we have been making very considerable improvement in the scheme. I will look at the situation which has arisen which the Deputy mentions because it may be the person was never assessed for DPMA. However, the Deputy must remember that we depend on the health boards for that purpose. I will raise the case with them and see what can be done in that regard.
(Carlow-Kilkenny): He is severely handicapped. If someone with a lesser handicap gets an allowance, surely it should follow logically that someone with a severe handicap should automatically get it?
The logic of the situation is the legislation says people with DPMA get it. That is the yardstick that is used. The simplest way to get around that could be that in particular cases if the persons would otherwise qualify for DPMA the health board would bring them into that qualification and we could cover them. We have no problem with that side of it. If that cannot be done we will have to look further to the future at how such people can be catered for.
Will the Minister not accept that in changing the regulation himself he now has an opportunity to extend the cover of free travel to those who are living in institutions who, but for that fact, would be entitled to DPMA?
That is what I said in reply to Deputy Browne, that if in the case——
The Minister did not.
He mentions the person would have been entitled to DPMA and we can look at that aspect of it, but the scheme specifies that the entitlement is based on the DPMA.
If they did not previously have it.
No, having had it at any time. The scheme is based on the DPMA. The simplest thing is if the person can be brought into the DPMA we can bring that person into free travel straight away. If that does no work in that case we can look at how else it can be dealt with. The simplest situation is for the health board to recognise the person as a DPMA person; then the person will automatically come under our schemes, for their companion in that case as well as for himself or herself.
Are the health boards entitled to do that?
That disposes of Questions for today.
