Ceisteanna ar Pholasaí nó ar Reachtaíocht - Questions on Policy or Legislation
Dail Éireann — 2023-02-01
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Mary Lou McDonald (SF), Dublin Central

The Taoiseach and his Cabinet colleagues were advised in a secret memo in 2011 that the withholding of the disabled persons maintenance allowance from people with disabilities was illegal. In the words of the memo circulated to the Taoiseach and the Government, the regulations were "plainly ultra vires and void". The State had not, as the Taoiseach said, a leg to stand on and, therefore, a strategy was pursued to keep these matters under wraps and out of court. Given that the State did not have a leg to stand on and that the withholding of this allowance was illegal and wrong, why did the Taoiseach do nothing about that? How is it that, 12 years on, he continues to deny these vulnerable citizens what is rightfully due to them?

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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/dail/2023-02-01/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:44+00:00
Sitting date: 2023-02-01