Social Welfare Appeals
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-18
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Louise O'Reilly (SF), Dublin Fingal West

Some of this stuff is very easy to understand. If someone has a child who has a condition or a disability and that child is doubly incontinent, there you go and that should be enough without a parent having to go into a narrative about what that means. We know what that means. That means restrictions on where people can go. That means they have to be with their child constantly. All of these things we know. Sometimes, the Department requires a lot of information from people about the impact that having a child with a disability has on the household. That is really hard for parents to do.
We conducted a survey. A really high proportion came back to us and advised that they experienced poverty in the period between making the application and actually receiving the DCA, regardless of whether that required an appeal. That is not acceptable. A lot can be done to streamline the forms but that narrative part of the form is really tough for parents to engage with.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-06-18/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:51+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-18