An 1l-year-old girl with Down's syndrome and poor balance is still waiting for a downstairs toilet to be installed in her home, two years after a report described it as a "high priority", the Dáil has been told. Marie O'Halloran reports.
In a private members' debate on the Disabled Person's grant, Labour's environment spokesman, Mr Eamon Gilmore, said that the child's mother sought the grant in 2001, and an occupational therapist from Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council inspected her home more than a year later. Almost two years after the therapist recommended the installation of the toilet to "reduce the risk" climbing stairs created, the family was still waiting, Mr Gilmore had been told.
Deploring the Government's failure to provide sufficient funding for the grant, he said the €60 million spent on electronic voting "would provide every waiting applicant with their downstairs toilet, their bedroom extension or their walk-in shower".
The Labour spokesman said that in his own constituency current applicants for the grant would not have their cases dealt with until the backlog from 2002 was dealt with. This meant that "people who have had accidents, strokes, heart attacks or who suffer from some disability will have to wait between two to three years at least for necessary adaptations to be carried out to their dwellings".
He called for the scheme to be made statutory so that people would be able to get their houses adapted "as of right" and it "would also eliminate the inconsistencies that apply from one local authority to another".
He also demanded the Government make the necessary funds available to clear the backlog.
The party's social and family affairs spokesman, Mr Willie Penrose, highlighted the case of Mr Harry O'Reagan (72), from Roscrea, whose leg was amputated. Beaumont Hospital applied on his behalf for the grant to build a bathroom with an accessible shower. However, Mr O'Reagan had to wash from a bowl for months and take weekly showers at a health centre.
The Minister of State, Mr Pat "The Cope" Gallagher, said that in the past four years €245 million had been spent on 33,000 individual grants, and a review of the scheme would be completed "very shortly".