Social Welfare Schemes Seanad Éireann — 2025-11-12 ============================================================ Teresa Costello (FF), Agricultural Panel I thank the Minister of State for that answer. I would argue the point about the three-week window. I do not think it is acceptable. People are living with cancer at the moment. Someone with stage 4 cancer could have returned to work six weeks ago and then realise they are exhausted. They would be in active treatment and cannot plan for when fatigue hits and when they cannot work at full capacity. I urge the Minister to look at this. I welcome the timeframes and the timely manner in which claims are being processed. We do need efficiency in such circumstances, including the manner in which exceptional circumstances are dealt with. I think that maybe only one person applied because people are not aware of the benefits of partial capacity and their right to it. That was why I included the information piece in my Commencement matter. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2025-11-12/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:18+00:00 Sitting date: 2025-11-12