Boy, 16, in court fight for disability allowance

A 16-year-old boy with attention deficit hyper-activity disorder and a cleft lip and palate has taken a High Court challenge after being refused a disability allowance.

The case raises issues concerning whether there is a policy within the Department of Social Protection under which officers deciding on disability allowance abdicate their responsibilities by deferring to the opinion of departmental medical assessors based on “desk assessments” of applicants.

In the teenage boy’s case, it is alleged the deciding officer impermissibly refused the allowance on the basis of a desk assessment by the departmental medical assessor that the boy was not “substantially restricted” in getting employment suitable to his age, experience, and qualifications.

The relevant regulations make no provision for any input by a medical assessor into such decisions prior to carrying out a physical examination, it is argued.

Leave to bring the judicial review challenge was granted by Mr Justice Micheal Peart.

The boy, suing through his mother, has ADHD and oppositional defiant disorder and also has a cleft lip and palate. His mother had received a domiciliary care allowance for him but, on reaching 16, qualification for a care allowance ceases and the issue of qualification for a disability allowance arises. The qualifying conditions require an applicant must suffer from a specified disability with the effect they are substantially restricted in undertaking employment suitable to their age, experience, and qualifications. The allowance is also subject to means.

In an affidavit, the boy’s mother said he applied last April for the allowance and submitted a medical report from a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist. She and a doctor also completed a supplementary form in which she set out her son’s social and behavioural difficulties.

She also provided material including school reports plus a letter from a psychiatrist stating her son’s speech production difficulties affected his self-esteem, resulting in difficulties in relationships and episodes of low mood, frustration, and anger.

Her son would not be capable for the foreseeable future of taking up the sort of work normally engaged by in people of his age, she said, but she very much hoped that would change. On July 15, the department refused her son’s application on the basis he did not satisfy the “medical condition”.

She obtained her son’s departmental file via a freedom of information request, that included an opinion of a departmental medical assessor and an earlier decision by a deciding officer. Issues arose relating to the statutory roles of the deciding officers and medical assessors, she said.