There are some pluses yet I’m still left short overall

ANTOINETTE Norris from Co. Dublin feels the Government has ‘given with one hand and taken away with the other’ in Budget 2016.

The single mother of five lives in a three-bedroom house with her children, Amanda, 22, Demi, 18, Sam, 17, Róisín, ten and nineyear-old Adam.

She is delighted with the addition to the child benefit (an extra €5 per child per month) and also with the Respite Care Grant for carers which was reinstated to €1,700.

She is entitled to this grant as her youngest son has autism and her daughter Demi has a condition called Cohen’s syndrome which means she is non-verbal, incontinent and has limited mobility which requires her to use a wheelchair. But at the same time she is devastated that there was no mention of mobility allowance which she was banking on as a means of funding Demi’s transport to school.

‘I am so angry that they didn’t tackle the issue of mobility,’ said the Finglas woman. ‘Because Demi is over 18 and technically an adult, I have to find the money to pay €66 a week for her to get to school and because I can’t afford to pay the full €3,482 a year it would cost to send her every day, she only gets to school three days every week.

‘This means that although I am getting the extra child benefit and the respite grant along with the Christmas bonus (75 per cent her weekly allowance of €277 lone-parent allowance and €156 half-rate carer’s allowance) and the €2.50 extra a week for fuel, I am still down because I have to pay for Demi’s trans- port out of my own pocket.’

Antoinette is reliant on children’s allowance and she says it isn’t fair that while her daughter remains a child in every sense other than her actual age, she is treated as an adult when it comes to certain costs.

‘I don’t know how I will make ends meet in the year ahead,’ she said. ‘I only just started paying for Demi’s school bus when she turned 18 so I don’t know how it will impact us in the long run, but at the moment I am using every penny of the children’s allowance to cover it.

‘Demi also gets charged €18 a week for rent (as does Amanda who is working) so that also comes out of the family budget. She gets an allowance of €188 a week and after paying for rent and transport, has only about €40 left. Adults with special needs really get kicked to the curb so I think it would be much better if people were assessed by needs and disability instead of treating everyone exactly the same.’

‘People ought to be assessed by needs’