Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Teachta. Gabhaim buíochas freisin leis an Teachta as an cheist. I thank her very much for acknowledging that the recent statistics from 2015 do show that consistent poverty is down and that income inequality is narrowing, albeit still much worse than where we were before the crisis. It is going in the right direction. I note that the Deputy acknowledged it because I think that people often do not acknowledge that.

The Deputy is absolutely right to say that people with disabilities suffer enormous disadvantage and enormous inequalities in our society, and we have very much more to do to improve living conditions and opportunities for them. In the previous budget, the budget for 2017, there was a considerable increase in funding for disability services. If I remember off the top of my head, I think it was in the region of €60 million. I am sure that we will find room for a further increase in funding for disability services for next year, not least in the area of respite, which I think is very important in giving people a break, and carers in particular. We also had in the social welfare package from March the first increase in weekly payments paid to people with disabilities and their carers in eight or nine years. I am not sure if that is going to be possible again next year, but I hope that it will be.

As the Deputy mentioned, under our Making Work Pay for People with Disabilities report, a number of measures were introduced to assist people with disabilities to re-enter the workforce or enter the workforce. For example, as Minister for Social Protection, I extended the free travel pass for five years to anyone who was on disability allowance and took up work. The Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, is working on changes to the medical card thresholds to ensure people on disability allowance and similar payments, if they take up work, do not lose their medical cards. That is an enormous fear people with disabilities have, that if they earn a bit more money, it will be wiped out by the fact they will lose their medical cards. We would hope to have that legislation through this year, which will encourage more people to take up work if they can.

We have also set the target in Departments and public agencies to provide 6% of all jobs to people with disabilities because people who have disabilities, particularly those with severe disabilities like blindness, find it very hard to get through interview processes. One thing that we discussed at Cabinet just this week and agreed to fast-track was a dedicated entry stream for people with disabilities into employment in Departments and Government agencies in order that they could increase their opportunities to enter employment.

In addition to that, my previous Department, the Department of Social Protection, is going to run an information campaign in the coming months informing people with disabilities of the opportunities and entitlements now available to them and the fact they can take a trial of work knowing that their disability allowance will be restored if the trial of work does not work out. Many people with disabilities fear that if they take up employment and it does not work out, they will have a difficulty getting back on welfare. We are going to give them an assurance that that is not the case.

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