Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Canney. Our next speaker is Deputy Mairéad Farrell, whom we have lost. She was online a second ago. We will give her a moment to come back. In the meantime, I might ask some questions if that is okay with our witnesses.

I have a number of questions but I will stay on Deputy Canney's point around disability. The ESRI very kindly sent us that report from 2019, which was really helpful. One of the sections was around variations across benefits. It seems to me that a huge amount of work was done on the variations when it comes to pensions. I presume that was because there is a legacy of contributory pensions and private pensions and it is a complex area in which there is already a body of research but not when it comes to more complex payments. I would proffer that disability payments, for example, are more complex because often, in the same way as with unemployment, people sometimes move in and out of that particular stage of life and might have more costs and need more supports. There does not seem to be the same amount of economic research on that particular topic. Dr. Doorley mentioned that research is being done. Is it fair to say that there is not the same kind of engagement on what indexation might mean for the disability sector? Based on what Dr. Doorley has seen from the Indecon report, which she has talked about with others, would it be fair to say that it seems we are quite far back on disability and there would need to be a kind of catch-up transition phase before we actually engage with pure indexation in that regard?