Grant Payments
Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-25
============================================================

Christopher O'Sullivan (FF), Cork South-West

Absolutely. I know the Department is aware of ALONE's submission, which will be taken into account. The review was quite recent. Senator Scahill makes some very good points. Assistive technology is allowed and is catered for but we need to give better support to the local authorities to allow them to have a bit more discretion. It probably has to be within reason. There has to be a definite, obvious benefit to the person who is applying. The cases the Senator has given clearly prove that. We have a much enhanced scheme. More funding is going into it. I get the point that local authorities are oversubscribed. That is a good thing in some ways as it indicates awareness that the grants are out there. Anyone who has served on a local authority is fully aware of how the grants can change lives. We need to ensure that as many people as possible who need them can get them.

---

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/2026-06-25/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:07+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-25