We are exhausted by the number of reports, reviews and investigations into the cost of disabilities for individuals. We had the Commission on the Status of Persons with Disabilities in 1996. We had Indecon's Report on the Cost of Disability in Ireland, which was published in 2021. We had a Green Paper on the cost of disability in 2023. We had an ESRI joint report with the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission in 2025, and we had another consultation in February of this year. We have been waiting over 30 years for a decision. I wonder whether a decision will ever be made or whether there will ever be a cost-of-disability payment for persons with disabilities. This extraordinary delay has left disabled persons with a totally inadequate standard of living. The at-risk-of-poverty rate for persons with disabilities is 24%, more than two and half times the rate for the rest of the population. As the Minister knows well, the cost of disability is between 52% and 57% of a household's disposable income. The additional cost is estimated to be anything from €488 to €555 per week. On top of that, Ireland has one of the lowest rates of disability employment in Europe. There are huge barriers to employment for people with disabilities, including a lack of personal assistants, a lack of equipment such as electric wheelchairs and a lack of personalised budgets. The fear of the loss of benefits is another huge barrier to employment. Those losses could include the loss of a medical card, the loss of the fuel allowance, the complete loss of or a reduction in a person's disability payment or the loss of the free travel card. In other EU countries, disabled people do not lose disability entitlements when they work. The biggest fear about and barrier to working is the loss of the medical card. Medical need should decide an entitlement to a medical card as opposed to someone's income. Because of the limited nature of income disregards, people with disabilities, if they work at all, tend to do so in low-paid or part-time employment. In relation to approval for disability allowance, the strict means testing and cliff-edge nature of the limits exclude many persons who would otherwise qualify for payment. Persons applying for allowance are often means-tested against their spouse's or partner's income, which is very problematic. Thousands of applicants are refused on initial application, with 43% of cases, or almost one in every two, overturned on appeal. The cost of means testing should be assessed, and consideration must be given to a move to universal payments. Housing is another cause of huge difficulty for people with disabilities. Many continue to live at home with their parents. Parents often are carers and care into their 70s, 80s and 90s. There are 2,065 adults with disabilities who are living with parents who are over the age of 70. Five hundred of these people live with parents who are over 80 years of age. Of course, the cost-of-living crisis has severely impacted people with disabilities. It is literally a case of heating or eating or charging an electric wheelchair or eating. The cost of home heating oil has gone through the roof, with no reduction whatsoever on offer. A significant number of people with disabilities are among the 317,000 families who in arrears on their electricity bills and the 185,000 families who are in arrears on their gas bills. The cost of food has spiralled out of control in recent years. Over the past five years, milk is up 43%, butter is up 42%, cheese is up 28%, diced beef is up 48%, chicken is up 33%, beef is up 32% and lamb is up 52%. On top of all that, the Government withdrew all cost-of-living supports in budget 2026, hitting workers, families and people with disabilities very hard. Families are being put to the pin of their collar to make ends meet. They cannot wait for next year's budget. They are in trouble now and they need help now. We need an emergency budget and a range of supports for families and people with disabilities. That must include a lump sum of at least €500. The money is available. The Minister knows that. The budget surplus this year will be €9.2 billion. Two or three weeks ago, the Government stated that the surplus will increase from €5 billion to €9.2 billion. I ask the Government to bring in an emergency budget and to do the right thing.

Sentiment score: -0.09