I welcome the opportunity to speak on the motion. I thank the Social Democrats for bringing it forward. People with disabilities are disproportionately at risk of poverty and social exclusion. Households that include people with disabilities require between 41% and 93% extra disposable income to achieve the same standard of living as households with no disabled members. A budget that leaves them significantly - by €1,400 - worse off than the previous year undermines Ireland's obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and deepens inequality. The motion before us speaks to a profound injustice that this Government continues to perpetuate. Last year's cost-of-disability package, though insufficient, has been ripped away. What is offered in budget 2026 is a devastating drop in income for people with disabilities. While Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and their Independent colleagues offer empty election-time promises, their actions abandon people and leave them with impossible choices between heating their home and charging a mobility device, between eating and keeping the lights on. That is their words. We see the hidden poverty in our constituencies on a daily basis: the prepay meter disconnections, the arrears, the children growing up at risk. This is not just policy failure, it is a conscious poverty trap. The Government must deliver an emergency winter payment. It must also deliver a fundamental shift. We need a Government that sees the dignity of disabled people not as a line item to cut but as a responsibility to be upheld. This motion is a step in that direction. I urge people to support it.

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