The Disabled Drivers and Disabled Passengers (Tax Concessions) Regulations, 1994 require that a disabled person must meet the specified medical criteria and be in possession of a primary medical certificate issued by the appropriate senior area medical officer. Refusal of a primary medical certificate may be appealed to the Disabled Drivers Medical Board of Appeal. The board is independent and its decision is final. I have no role in determining whether a person satisfies the medical criteria laid down in the above mentioned regulations, nor have I powers which would allow me to overturn a decision of the Medical Board of Appeal.
There is increasing demand from applicants to gain admittance to this scheme. However, as with all schemes governed by qualifying conditions, there will always be applicants who do not meet the required conditions. Therefore, it may be that the difficulties referred to by persons in obtaining the primary medical certificate do not indicate administrative inefficiencies but rather the fact that the applicants concerned may not meet the specified medical criteria.
We have considered how to resolve these sort of issues before. A comprehensive review of the workings of the provisions of the scheme was carried out in 1993-4, involving wide-ranging consultations with the Departments of Health, the Environment and Justice, the Disabled Drivers Medical Board of Appeal, the Revenue Commissioners, relevant organisations catering for the disabled and Opposition spokespersons on Finance.
In the course of the review detailed consideration was given to the qualifying medical criteria for entry to the scheme, bearing in mind the various representations which had been received seeking the extension of the benefits of the scheme to many additional categories of disabled individuals. It was decided that the scheme should continue to focus on persons with the most severe and permanent mobility restrictions. Six different types of disablement are listed under the regulations, drawn up following that review, and a qualifying person must satisfy on one or more of them. It is the nature and the extent of the disability which determines a person's eligibility under the scheme rather than the circumstances which have given rise to that disability. The cur rent regulations, namely, the Disabled Drivers and Disabled Passengers (Tax Concessions) Regulations came into effect on 1 December 1994.
Additional Information
A current review of the scheme is being undertaken by an interdepartmental group under the chairmanship of the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform with a view to determining what modifications, if any, might be proposed to the scheme. The existing medical criteria for qualification may be among the items examined by the group. However, I do not want to raise expectations that any person who suffers from some form of disability will be able to benefit from the scheme following the completion of this examination.
In addition, the Revenue Commissioners have carried out a wide-ranging technical review of the operation of the scheme and their report is also awaited. However, this review is much narrower in scope in that it addresses problems with the current scheme and makes recommendations on how to make it operate in a more effective and cost-efficient manner for its present target group.
While I am very sympathetic to people with disabilities, the difficulty with this scheme relates to the need to focus its substantial benefits on those most affected by lack of mobility due to physical disability. The cost of the current scheme has been steadily increasing and opening it up to wider ranges of disabilities would significantly add to this cost. The total cost to the Exchequer for 1998 was £14.4 million and it is estimated that the cost will rise to £16.5 million in 1999. This does not include the costs of the exemption from the payment of road tax.
As was indicated in the other House last night, a variety of requests have been made for the medical criteria to be relaxed so as to extend the range of qualifying disabilities to include many other categories suffering from other ailments. In addition, there are requests to allow persons not fully meeting the current criteria relating to the loss of limbs to be admitted. The number of potential beneficiaries is unclear but according to groups representing the disabled, there are up to 350,000 persons in Ireland who could be regarded as disabled to some degree. Clearly a scheme which attempted to meet all these needs would involve a radical overhaul of the basis of the relief and result in a large increase in cost.
The potential cost and the possible very wide uptake of any extension of the scheme can be gauged by the interest of Deputies and the 30 or so questions tabled on this issue so far this year. I accept the obvious concern and the sincere motivation of the House in seeking to extend this scheme. Needless to say, we want to be sensitive on this issue, but there are genuine problems in accommodating extensions of relief as I hope I have demonstrated.
