INDEPENDENT TDs have called for the administration of the domiciliary care allowance to be returned to the Department of Health from Social Protection because of the number of families losing the payment in reviews.

Independent TD for North Kildare Catherine Byrne claimed transferring the payment to Social Protection had moved the application process from “being a health-centred support to being a soft-target for cuts”. But Minister Joan Burton insisted there were no cuts in the scheme and the numbers of children receiving the allowance had substantially increased by 3,000 to 26,000, with a quarter of all those cases granted since the scheme moved to Social Protection.

She said last year alone 13,552 applications were made and almost 6,300 or 46 per cent of applications were accepted. Spending had increased from €138 million to €145 million in 2011 with €146 million the expected cost this year, with about 100 applications a week.

Ms Burton added that 40 per cent of parents who receive the allowance also receive other payments, totalling €16,742 a year.

Ms Murphy opened a Private Members debate for the technical group on the allowance of €309.50 paid for a disability where a child requires substantially more care and supervision than another child of the same age. She said there was mounting evidence families of children on the autism spectrum were being targeted although she acknowledged that was not exclusively the case.

The Government aimed to protect the most vulnerable or gave the perception of this, but for the cuts to be happening through a department that was named Social Protection “is really cynical”. One six-year-old boy whose family had been refused the payment, attends a special school, is not toilet trained, is a danger to himself, cannot feed himself, cannot dress himself or tie his shoelaces, she said. Parents also did not have enough time to prepare all the information when their case was reviewed. “This system is flawed, this system is cruel and this system needs to be changed,” she said.

Ms Burton acknowledged the difficulties parents had in providing the information for review and she increased the reply deadline from 21 to 60 days. But she said to claim department officials had an “agenda” against children with autism “is simply not borne out by the facts”.