In light of the commitment made in the programme for Government to continue to significantly increase the income disregard for carer's allowance in each budget and, ultimately, phase out the means test, will the Government reconsider cases of people whose carer's allowance has been removed because they had to increase their income to provide private therapies for their children? I have a case of a family in Meath West, a couple who have fought for their daughter's needs every step of the way. The mother continued to work despite her daughter's complex needs and the father took on a second job, all to ensure their daughter could avail of private services as they felt they had waited too long publicly. I welcome the commitment to phase out the means test, but could we not freeze immediately the review of means test for carers currently in the system?

The Government is committed to dealing with the means test in respect of the carer's allowance and it will be in the next budget that progress on that front will commence.

We will have to wait until budget time and the lead-up to the budget on that issue. It is a very important issue that is in the programme for Government and all parties to the programme for Government are very committed to doing this. It is very important.

More broadly, it is about how we can support families with children with special needs across the income spectrum and do everything we can to ease the financial pressures many of them are under. I take the Deputy's point that this year there are challenges but the budget last year was enormous. There was significant expenditure. We will do this on a programme basis and, on a number of fronts, we will endeavour to help people in the circumstances the Deputy identified.