I also thank my colleagues, Deputies Quaide and Hayes, for bringing this motion forward. Politics is all about choices. This Government made a choice in the budget to cut payments for people with a disability while it gave a VAT cut of €390 million to investor funds and developers. Right now, disabled people are struggling to pay the cost of living, including the costs of heating, food, and charging mobile equipment and wheelchairs, yet the Government refuses to implement our very straightforward proposal for a €400 emergency payment. It has the budget surplus. Why will it not ensure disabled people can turn on their heat this winter without worry or fear? The Taoiseach said the emergency cost-of-disability payment was not fiscally sustainable. What is not sustainable is disabled people freezing in their homes. This is supposed to be a republic based on equality and social justice. For disabled people and carers, this is a republic in name only. These are the most vulnerable people, yet the Government gives hundreds of millions of euro to wealthy investor funds while cutting the payments for disabled people. The Minister's statement says it all. It is absolutely disgraceful that he said we should be extremely careful about our alarmist language and should not be putting out anything that is misleading. I ask him to withdraw that. Who is doing the misleading? Is it the Irish Wheelchair Association? Today, the Irish Wheelchair Association made a very clear statement that people with disabilities are choosing between eating, heating and covering basic costs. The Minister is so disconnected. That he could make his statement shows how disconnected and out of touch the Government is. I am utterly shocked. The statement implies the Government has access to the funds to make the payments if it wanted to make them. What is happening is the Government’s fault. It is gaslighting the public and disabled people, denying them their reality. It is saying they are not actually suffering from a cost-of-living crisis or facing these choices. They are facing these choices. This is their lived reality. I am really shocked that the Minister stood up here today and made the statement about misleading and about dangerous messages to the effect that people must choose between food and heating. I am not sure the Minister actually thought through the significance of his statement. It is one of the most profoundly hurtful and disconnected statements I have heard a Minister make about people with disabilities. It implies they are essentially making up the assertion that they are choosing between eating and heating. I am shocked. I ask the Minister to withdraw his statement and apologise for making it.

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