‘I am going to fight this refusal to the end’

The letter landed through the front door last Friday — and it wasn’t good news.

Yvonne Murphy opened it to discover that, after a year of waiting, the Department of Social Protection had refused her appeal for payment of the domiciliary care allowance (DCA), having initially turned down her application last January.

Yvonne, 32, from Abbeyfeale, Co Limerick, had applied for the payment regarding her daughter Abigail, who will turn 4 in March and who, in her mother’s words, “requires supervision 24/7”.