Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

More and more people are working and, therefore, making social welfare contributions. I was looking at some figures. The number of recipients of disability allowance, which is a means-tested, non-benefit payment, has risen from 101,000 to 155,000 since 2012. The number of people on invalidity pensions has only risen from 50,000 to 57,000. I would have expected it to be the other way round. It is the other way round in most other schemes, because more and more people have contributions. The contribution requirement for an invalidity pension is not that difficult to satisfy. Numbers in the means-tested fund are going down while the numbers in other are going up. What seems to be happening is that people have the requisite contribution record, apply for an invalidity pension and are ruled out under the terms of the scheme and told that they qualify for disability allowance. One would have thought that one of those schemes would be the means-tested version of the other.

I am going to read out some requirements now and we can have a spot-the-difference competition. They are not very long. To qualify for disability allowance, one must have an injury, disease or physical or mental disability that has continued for at least one year or is expected to continue for at least one year; or be substantially restricted because of disability from doing work that would be suitable for a person of one's age, experience and qualifications. Those are the requirements to qualify for disability allowance. Remember those precise terms.

To meet the medical rules for an invalidity pension, one must have been incapable of work for at least 12 months and be likely to be incapable of work for at least another 12 months. A person may have been getting illness benefit or disability allowance during that time. Most people would be getting illness benefit. The alternative is that one must be permanently incapable of working. In certain cases of very serious illness or disability, an applicant may be able to transfer directly, but we will ignore that.

There is a subtle difference between those requirements. It is esoteric. For the disability allowance, the requirements mean that a person would have to be restricted from doing work that would be suitable for a person of his or her age, experience and qualifications. Let us consider people who did manual work throughout their lives. As long as they can show they cannot do manual jobs, they are not expected to get a job as a university professor of atomic physics. By contrast, people applying for an invalidity pension - and this is being applied more and more rigidly - have no such get-out-of-jail free card. They are being told that they could be trained for an office job or be trained to be a professor or something else. Looking at the figures, many people who have the contribution record to make them eligible for an invalidity pension are being put onto the disability allowance. The first problem with that relates to the means test. If you have a spouse or partner, you are in trouble.

Second, you are not given an automatic social welfare contribution whereby, if you are on invalidity pension, you get a credit every week. As for the illness qualification for both schemes, I do not mind about the first year. That is easy because anybody on invalidity pension will have done a year on illness benefit anyway.