Mr. R?n?n Hession:

I thank the Deputy for the questions. I have noted a number of different topics. I will work through them and ask if my colleague, Ms Geraldine Hurley, has anything to add.

If any gets missed, I will come back to the Deputy. I was trying to think while the Deputy was talking as well, to try to make sure I could cover the ground.

The Deputy's first question was on appeals and processing. Approximately 82% of decisions that are made on disability allowance are made by the Department's own officers. In other words, if they are not made in the initial instance, they may be referred back for review and the ultimate decision is made there.

There are a couple of different factors in it. We have tried to work with the various different groups. We certainly want to try to rationalise the forms wherever we can. Of course, when you have a means test and the added complexity of the medical conditionality, there is a limit to how far you can reduce the application requirements. However, we try to keep the forms readable and short. We have reduced the length of the carer's allowance form considerably.

An issue that has been raised in other committees is that understandably, people will try to apply for the payment as soon as possible because if you are ultimately successful, that is the date to which your payment will be backdated. Obviously, they want to make sure that they are eligible as soon as possible but at times that can mean that people will not necessarily go to the trouble or, to be honest, the expense of preparing the specialist reports that might help their application. It is only when it then goes to appeal that they try to bolster the paperwork that can help their application. We are looking at what we can do on that to try to improve it. The intention is always to try to make it easy for the customer and to make sure that people get their entitlements. We certainly are not trying to frustrate people.

In terms of the means test, the Deputy asked about the costing of the abolition of the means test. Figures have been provided by the carers' organisations effectively saying that if you look at everyone who gets the carer's support grant and then subtract the number who already get carer's allowance, the difference is your level of payment. We have looked at overall high-level costings for reducing the means test but effectively, if you remove the means test you are providing a universal payment. There are non-means tested options such as the carer's benefit - obviously domiciliary care allowance is not means tested. In terms of costing, it is something we are looking at but it is always difficult to cost when there is a large cohort you are not already supplying because in a sense, you do not know what you do not know. You do not know what their means situation would be, you do not know to what extent they are excluded from the means test and you do not know to what extent they will meet medical conditionality if they are not already within your customer base. It is tricky to give an accurate costing there.

I will perhaps come back to Ms Hurley in a moment on employment supports and maybe will whistle through the ones on my side.

On the cost of disability, The Cost of Disability in Ireland report published in December 2021 took some time to do. To assure the Deputy, part of the reason it took so long to do was our wish to make sure we had a highly inclusive consultation process. We took on board feedback from stakeholder groups about the time that would be needed and about the questions that were on it and the length of the form, because the original survey was quite detailed. It is possibly, if not the largest, the second-largest survey that ever has been done on disabled people in this country. While it took a bit longer, having that perspective enriched the analysis.

The report took a top-down and bottom-up approach. In other words, it did a econometric analysis looking at coming up with a costing and then it asked people. The two different methods more or less aligned in terms of the ranges that came out. The report stated that undoubtedly there is a range of costs and it depends on your condition, of course some people have multiple conditions which complicates matters, but that there is a mix of responses needed. Some of it is income supports. Some of it is grants. Some of it is services. Also, employment, which the Deputy touched on in one of her questions, is a big factor. As I noted, the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, was chairing a group which is co-ordinating and looking across Government at the responses.

From our point of view, there are two main things I would point to. In my opening statement, I outlined the budget matters that were done to address the cost of living and cost of disability. There were previous matters in previous budgets. Also, we are looking at the straw-man proposal, which essentially is looking at how we should structure our disability payments in order that the level of payment better affects the condition of the person and how to do it in a way that better connects people to employment, insofar as they are able. We are working on that. We have done a lot of work on it. We are hoping to get it through in quarter 1 but it is important that we get it right. Then we will have a consultation process, as we always do, in which we will want to engage with the various stakeholders.

The Deputy asked about secondary benefits and I take her point on them. It is an issue. When we look at, for example, even the disregards, I have been at stakeholder forums where I have heard people say that you cannot earn more than €140 or you lose your disability allowance, DA. That is not how it works but I understand the perception that is there. The disregard has now moved up to €165 but what we have tended to see is that people, even though you can continue earning up to €375 before you fully lose your payment, tend to get to that disregard level and stop, which is not how disregards are meant to work. Disregards are supposed to help you smooth the journey back to combining employment income with social welfare income. There is an anxiety that, aside from how it might affect your payment, your payment is also your passport to other things, whether it is the medical card, free travel etc. In 2018 or 2019, the means test for the medical card, which is not under the Department of Social Protection's control, was changed and there were some changes to try to get over that. We also have a fast-track system where you get back onto the payment quickly if it does not work out for you. In other words, in terms of applying, you do not have to go all the way back to the start. We try to make it easy.

It is not an easy one to crack. We have had discussions with people in a lot of other jurisdictions. There was a big summit in Belfast last year, the Harkin summit, where we dealt with people around the world. A lot of countries are struggling with this.

The Deputy asked about disabled artists. This issue has come up and we have good engagement with the arts community, both on the basic income proposal, which was under the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, but also on how we do the means test. The way we work is that if you get, say, an Arts Council grant for a project that is supposed to last X time, what we typically do in respect of disability allowance is to spread that money over that period. In other words, if you get €1,000 to do a ten-week course, we will split €100 over the ten weeks. That is generally the way it works. By the way, we net off expenses. In other words, materials and workplace essentials would be netted off. There have been calls to us for clarity around that and we have tried to put more information out there. We are dealing with the Arts Council on that.

The Deputy asked about employment supports. I might ask if Ms Hurley has anything to add to what I have already said.