Rise in families who want domiciliary care grant

There was a big increase in the number of families applying for domiciliary care allowance last year — and also a rise in the percentage of those applications that were rejected.

The allowance is worth €309 to a family every month and is made to the carer of a child with a severe disability who lives at home. It has been the subject of debate in recent years due to the high level of rejections, such as in 2013 when more than half of all applications were refused at the first stage.

Last year’s figures show that 6,422 allowance applications were received, and 6,313 were fully processed. Of those, 2,102 were refused — almost exactly one third. That compares with 5,166 applications processed in 2014, with 1,369 refused on initial assessment — a refusal rate of 26.5%.