Mr. R?n?n Hession:

On the question of reviews, it is not a condition that we review everyone every year. Between the two main payments, namely, the disability allowance and the invalidity pension, 220,000 people are on those schemes and we do not have anywhere near the capacity to review that volume of people. Obviously, there are individual circumstances. There is a wide spectrum of disabilities, both in terms of the nature of the disability and the extent of it, and there are what are called comorbidities, where people have more than one condition. What tends to happen is that the medical assessors, who are doctors in our Department, will assess what the appropriate review interval is, depending on the condition.

If someone is on the invalidity pension, for example, there are two main qualifying criteria. One is that the person is permanently incapable of work. In those cases, where the condition is not going to resolve itself, there is not an obvious justification for annual or even regular reviews. The other criterion is that the condition has existed for a year and is likely to continue for a further year. Somebody who qualifies into that criterion has a condition that is expected to improve. These are statutory schemes that the Oireachtas has ordained as the rules for the schemes, so we have to comply with them. For the disability allowance, if the condition is not going to improve, those cases tend to be marked as "do not review again", or DNRA. If there is a specific case of concern or interest, the Senator should bring it to our attention and I will be happy to look into it but, in general, we do not carry out that volume or regularity of reviews as standard.

Before I hand over to my colleagues, I might touch on the costs of disability, given that question was probably best directed at me. The cost of disability report identified a wide range of costs and the Senator is correct in saying the average range, although it varies considerably, is between about €9,500 and €11,800. There is quite a lot of granularity in the report, which is important when it comes to translating its findings into policy responses. There is a whole-of-government approach, referred to the national disability inclusion strategy, NDIS, under the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, at which all the Departments are represented.

As for what is driving the costs, it can relate to the cost of medicines, of therapies, of transport, of broadband, of housing or of ongoing living costs such as higher heating costs, where people need to keep the heating turned on permanently at a higher level. Indecon, the consultants that advised on and prepared that report, has stated that what we need to do to respond to it is a mix of things, including income supports, targeted grants and services, whereby if the issue relates to access to therapies, for example, perhaps what people need is greater access to a therapy rather than an income support to help them procure it privately. From the Department's point of view and as already outlined, there were increases in the budget – I understand it was the largest social welfare package in the history of the State - to try to address some of that, although there is more to do there, as outlined in the disability straw man. What Indecon advised not to do was to take whatever resources we have and try to spread it thinly among everybody. It indicated it would be better to target those who are facing the highest costs, and that is something we are looking at in the straw man.

For those who have not come across a straw man previously, it is an hypothecated version of how the future might look. The analogy I often use is that it is a bit like when you go to Ikea and see an Ikea apartment mocked up. Everything is customisable, but you sort of need to see one to make up your mind about what you think would work. It is not a Government proposal but rather one possible model to invite reactions. We will bring that forward shortly and the cost of disability will feed into that. In any event, there is a Government decision and all Departments are responding to that and feeding in through the NDIS.

An aspect of the Senator's question related to how costs are linked to the disregard. The disregard does not take account of a person’s costs. It applies to those who go back to work. Of 157,000 people on the disability allowance, about 12,000 people are working, or using the disregard.

What the disregard does is calculate how much of the payment people keep as they work more and more. It is not related to their costs; it is related to their employment income. Two or three budgets ago, it was about €120, then it was moved to €140 and it is now €165, which aligns it with the disregard for lone parents. It means that when someone goes over €165, for every €1 they earn, their payment reduces by 50 cent up to €375, and then it is euro for euro. The net effect is that if the person goes back to work, up to about €495 they have some form of allowance. It is a sort of transition mechanism for people who are leaving the payment and going back to work. As they work more, the payments phase gradually, rather than having a cliff edge where they go back to work and lose their payment. In other words, it is not necessarily directed at the costs and it is more about how to get the right blend between social welfare income support and employment support.

There was another question that will be dealt with by my colleagues.