2026-06-18

13. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Minister for Social Protection to outline any additional disability-related supports he is planning to introduce in the upcoming budget to help disabled people with the increasing costs of living; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [46362/26]

Is Deputy Murphy taking this question on behalf of Deputy Boyd Barrett?

Yes. I am fairly certain it was emailed in.

There is no request in front of me, but that is okay. Away you go, Deputy Murphy.

This question relates to the cost-of-disability payment. Obviously, a big political issue over the past six months was the cut in the budget of €1,400-plus for disabled people and the call for emergency cost-of-living disability payments. In response, the Government stated that it is working on a cost-of-disability payment and is going to introduce it in budget 2027. The Minister had promised to bring forward a concrete proposal by the end of the month, but this has not appeared yet. Where is it? Will the Minister guarantee that it will be included in budget 2027?

I am not in position to discuss in detail any measures that will be in budget 2027. Work is under way in relation to that, and the details have to be discussed within Government. However, we have made it clear that we recognise that there are significant additional costs which disabled people face in their daily lives. We are committed to addressing this as a priority over the term of this Government. That is why we have the commitment to introduce the permanent cost-of-disability payment. This initiative will add to work done in the context of budget 2026. As part of an overall package of €1.15 billion for new social protection measures, expenditure in respect of disabled people and their carers was increased to just over €6 billion per annum. The budget contained significant targeted measures to support disabled people, including increases to core welfare rates, the largest ever increase in the child support payment, the largest ever increase in the income disregard for carer's allowance, increases in the rate of the domiciliary care allowance and improvements to the wage subsidy scheme. In the national human rights strategy, there was a commitment to establish a strategic focus network summit on the cost of disability. Considerable work is under way in this regard. We hosted a summit at the Aviva Stadium on 13 May. Last week, I spent an hour and a half with the joint Oireachtas committee discussing the cost-of-disability payment. A public consultation payment process ahead of the summit on the cost of disability received over 1,100 submissions. I will shortly bring to the Government the report relating to the summit, the submissions made and details of the interaction with the Oireachtas committee last week. Given the high level of submissions, work on this matter is continuing. I would like to thank the team in my Department who are giving considerable attention to it. The submissions request that universal payment be made to all people with disabilities, but with a recognition that a differentiated approach could be developed over time to reflect the fact that some forms disability give rise to higher challenges and costs than others. We are continuing to engage with disability groups. A specific workshop on disability matters was hosted as part of the national economic dialogue and we will continue to engage, including at our pre-budget forum on 1 July and with the network of disabled persons organisations that we have within the Department. I intend to bring a proposal to Government as part of my budget 2027 discussions. This is a priority for me.

I do not question that the Minister knows the real impact of having a disability, and he knows the figures. He stated at the conference that the additional cost for households with a disabled person is up to €555 a week. I am sure the Minister knows that the official risk of poverty rates are 32.5%. When we take into account the cost of disability, however, this rises to over 65%, which is obviously immense. The issue is whether the Government is going to deliver on what it said in the context of the uproar, rightly, about the budget last year and that we were going to introduce this. The Minister told the conference he would bring a concrete proposal on a new cost-of-disability payment to the Department by the end of June. The Minister did not repeat that commitment in his answer here. I wonder will the Minister repeat it now. It does seem to me that the timeframe is very tight in terms of this actually being delivered for budget 2027. Disabled people cannot be asked to wait again for another budget, which I worry we are on track for.

I will absolutely be bringing it to Government. I still hope to do so if not by the end of June then very early in July. That is a consequence of 1,100 people who participated, including three of the four political parties represented in the House at the moment. I cannot recall receiving a submission from the Deputy's party in relation to how it might work or with regard to making the tough choices as to how it might be paid and how it might be outlined. Sinn Féin and the Social Democrats are the two other parties that are represented here. On the day of the summit, we engaged with various groups to discuss how it could be paid. To be absolutely clear, I cannot write the budget at this point. I wish I could and give the Deputy a guarantee on it. There will be very robust discussion, but I cannot make it any clearer that it is a priority for me to introduce a permanent payment and then to allow it to develop over the lifetime of this Government and future Governments. We have people currently going through all the submissions to ensure that they are recognised, and I will be in a position to bring a proposal to the Government as a consequence of the budgetary process, but we are also very clear that we are going to engage with the disabled persons organisations, DPOs, and the representative organisations as part of that ongoing process. It will not be done in isolation.

The tough choices I am in favour of the Government making are putting a levy on data centres, putting a wealth tax on the multimillionaires and increasing corporation tax. They are the tough choices that we make in our budget proposals on an annual basis and in which we included a cost-of-disability payment for a number of years. They are better tough choices than forcing disabled people to live in poverty. The Minister is saying that it will not be the end of June or early July any more. I presume he accepts that that is a very tight timeframe for a concrete proposal to make its way into a budget. The Minister made the point, and the point was made at the conference, that the cost would not be insignificant if a universal payment was introduced, which we support. This needs to be in the budget. There need to be measures to address the deep poverty that disabled people are sinking into. The figures are going to be worse reflecting this year's budget. I stress very strongly that this needs to be done as soon as possible, and it needs to be included in the budget.

The Deputy's proposals would drive people into unemployment, reduce our tax bases and reduce our ability to actually address this because without a sustainable economy and without sustainable resources, we cannot make these kinds of payments. That is not a tough choice. The Deputy is making a choice that will impair our ability to address and assist people with disabilities. What we are trying to do is have a programme that works and has a backup. We had 1,173 responses to the process. That was an extraordinary response, and each response has been gone through. There were 1,086 responses from individuals and 87 responses from groups and other organisations. The Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and the Minister of State, Deputy Canney, as the three Government leaders, attended the cost-of-disability summit on 13 May and are very much engaged in this process. They took time out of their diaries to engage with it and listen. We have done a lot of pre-work in relation to this. This will not be something that will be landed on colleagues in government when it comes, and I continue to work on this daily. We had a very good session of about an hour and half at the Oireachtas committee last week where we went through the proposals of other parties that were willing to put choices on the line in relation to this payment.

We are nearly out of time. I will allow Deputy O'Reilly to ask the next question, with one response from the Minister.