I welcome the Minister to the House to discuss the operation of the physically disabled person's grant. I refer specifically to the North Tipperary County Council area, which is the area with which I am familiar, and what has happened to the grant in that county in recent times. After being warned as part of our Estimates discussion in December, at the January meeting of the county council we were told that it was finding it necessary to suspend the operation of the grant in the area due to financial constraints, and that as of that date, more than two weeks ago, the council would not be able to process any new applications but would only honour applications which had been fully accepted, with planning permission approved where necessary, health board approval gained and tenders accepted – in other words, only where the work was almost ready to go ahead would the council proceed, and then only because it felt it had no other option under the law.
Even in the short period since then a number of people have approached me who want to apply for the scheme, but the scheme has now effectively been suspended. The financial background, as the Minister knows, is that one third of the cost of the scheme is paid by the council and two thirds by the Department of the Environment and Local Government. At the moment, North Tipperary County Council has an outstanding liability, we are told, of more than €800,000 to the scheme, with another €400,000 in approved applications due to be funded if they all go ahead. This means that the council may have to pay out more than €1 million for the scheme, which we are told it does not have. This amounts to a crisis in the funding of the scheme, which has resulted in its being suspended. This is unacceptable.
The grant is not means tested. It was devised to assist a household or individual who needed to make adjustments or additions to a dwelling to accommodate a disabled person, for example, somebody who is confined to a wheelchair, or has an illness resulting in a permanent disability that necessitates the installation of a shower where a bath cannot be used or a downstairs bathroom or bedroom. The scheme has proved extremely popular: we were told, at county council level, that in north Tipperary we have one of the highest numbers of applications for the scheme outside the cities. That suggests that either word of mouth has got around that the scheme is very successful and accessible or the quality of housing, particularly among the elderly, is so bad that it needs a major upgrade.
One of the reasons people are dependent on this grant is that the housing aid scheme for the elderly has effectively broken down, which means that many older people are using the physically disabled person's grant in order to have, in some cases, quite basic repairs carried out in their homes. They are getting letters telling them there is a four-year waiting list for the housing aid scheme. About two years ago, the Comptroller and Auditor General, in a report on the operation of that scheme, concluded that elderly people are probably dying before their time due to the housing conditions in which they are living and the inability of local authorities – or in this case the health boards – to implement the housing aid scheme to a satisfactory level.
Perhaps the Minister will clarify this, but I would have thought that the grant had a legal and statutory underpinning. However, it is now not available to those who are entitled to apply for it in our county, where elderly people, families with a disabled child and people who have been in accidents will no longer be able to access the scheme. I am aware of many cases in which work that needs to be carried out cannot be, because people cannot afford to pay for it on their own. Recently, after a struggle lasting over twelve months, an elderly couple with whom I have had many dealings, who live on the side of a mountain without electricity, running water or an indoor bathroom, were able to build a decent bathroom and bedroom because of the physically disabled person's grant. They now have a bit of comfort for the first time in their lives. It was a struggle but we finally secured the grant and it has been useful.
It is intolerable, unacceptable and wrong that the scheme is no longer available due to the financial situation in which the council finds itself. I ask that the Department of the Environment and Local Government respond as a matter of urgency.