Ms Fleachta Phelan:

Transition points are always a key issue and are raised often. I am sure that the others will have something to say on this matter as well. The transition point is not just at 18 years of age. People can get disability allowance at 16 and, if they manage to attend further or higher education, there is another transition point at the end of that process. A classic issue that arises is of someone having a personal assistant to support him or her throughout university but, at exactly the time he or she needs the personal assistant for support in applying for employment, the person loses the assistance because its funding is attached to the education of which he or she had been in receipt. The person goes back to being on his or her own without the personal assistant's support. This often has to do with funding lines, consistency across Departments and where the breaks occur.

Another issue that arises where transition points occur or qualifications are received is that of the Department of Social Protection writing out to people checking to see whether they still have disabilities. People can make very dark responses to that. For example, they might say, "My limb has not grown back in the interim but thank you very much for checking."

I agree with the Deputy regarding housing and means testing. A key point that we would make, particularly now that we have the cost of disability report - we already knew, but it is there in black and white now - is that the means test does not in any way factor in the extra cost of disability. It should be included in the thresholds. The maximum allocation has not been increased in more than ten years. This week, the Department announced a review of the adaptation grants. Many of our organisations will be submitting strong consultations making recommendations in that regard.

I take the Deputy's point on modern families. We sometimes hear from separated parents. Often, the father has a disabled child staying with him on weekends and is struggling to find a housing situation that is suitable for the child because the mother, being the child's primary carer, has managed to stay in the home where there is already a system in place. There is not much support for the other parent.

The number of smart homes is increasing, but there are not many examples. The new housing strategy for disabled people is starting to be rolled out. As assistive technology reduces in cost, there will be many opportunities. It is also a question of having an approach of building universally designed homes in general.

I will make a few points about the issue of poverty, given that we are wrapping up.

We rank among the worst countries in the European Union for the poverty of disabled people. We are ranked among Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Bulgaria - with no disrespect to those countries. As a rich European country that ranks mid- to high-table on many social indicator tables at EU level, it is distinctly shocking. The roadmap for social inclusion includes the only specific poverty reduction targets that we have for disabled people. We are aiming to lower poverty rates for disabled people by 2030 to rates that are higher than our current levels for the general population. While it is extremely problematic to have an unequal set of goals, they are the only goals we have and we use them to argue to the Department. While we have those goals, there are no actions in the roadmap that indicate how we will get there. We will absolutely not get there by the Government giving €5 every year or second year. It is just not going to get us there. There is also very important work by the Society of St. Vincent de Paul that records and estimates the public service cost of poverty. The idea is that it is too costly to give people a decent income and yet we are not factoring in all the other systemic costs that poverty creates around health, our justice system, and all sorts of other costs that are there.

We have seen how our citizens' assemblies in this country have often been ahead of the system. The citizens have deliberated and made recommendations, while the system does not seem to be ready to be there with them. There is one source of hope for all of us. As Deputy Clarke said, the public is willing to pay extra to move towards a fairer system. The question is why the system is unwilling.

On the question as to why the system is unwilling, I mentioned the issue of incentivisation earlier. I find it concerning that in some discussions with the Department of Social Protection on a set of policy spaces, some officials have asked whether it is the job of the Department to provide an income above poverty level to individuals. We argue emphatically that it absolutely is. It is concerning to hear that response. We have to look at how on earth we move towards that goal.

I refer to two pieces of research that are relevant. We have not mentioned how there is a disability pay gap for disabled women in the workforce. The disability pay gap is higher for women than it is for men; surprise, surprise. That is another issue that needs to be considered. There is also an important piece of research by the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, from last year that looks at children in poverty. It highlights the fact that children of disabled parents are substantially more likely to live in poverty and are more likely to live with difficult health conditions. This is particularly the case if the mother has a disability. It is an area that requires a lot of attention.

To conclude on a slightly broader point, I attended the National Economic Dialogue as part of my work on Monday this week and, yesterday, I took the train to Balbriggan to attend the Social Inclusion Forum. The forum is run by the Department of Social Protection and the National Economic Dialogue is run by the Department of Finance. I was struck by the gender make-up of the attendees at both events. It may not surprise committee members that at the National Economic Dialogue - it is a guesstimate - there was a 70% male participation and 30% female participation. At the Social Inclusion Forum, the balance was reversed. This was very striking. At the National Economic Dialogue, the Department of Social Protection ran a workshop, which many of us attended, and it was very focused on labour force participation. There is an increasing focus from the Department to bring disabled people back into the employment market. As we are at full employment levels, there is now an interest in those groups. However, the word "poverty" was not discussed in the workshop until many of us showed up and raised it.

The broader point is the question around gendered understandings of who speaks in which spaces and in which areas of expertise. It was very striking to see the gender balance being primarily male in the economic space and primarily female in the social inclusion space. The question I put to the Minister of State, Deputy Joe O'Brien, in our discussions at the Social Inclusion Forum yesterday was how we bring those two spaces together, because there are separate conversations on economics in one room and social inclusion in another and yet our economy should run to support our society, including all our disabled citizens.