Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputy Harkin.

I thank People Before Profit-Solidarity for presenting this Private Members' motion to the Dáil. I welcome the news that the Government is planning to scrap the Green Paper on Disability Reform. The proposals were widely condemned by a broad coalition of disability, mental health and carers' groups. I am glad the Government has recognised, as everybody else has, just how unfit for purpose the Green Paper was. This was, however, a shameful attempt to reform the system to benefit the State rather than the people who rely on disability payments to live. While the Government can scrap the Green Paper, or "consultation paper" as it was described, how it got to the Minister's desk is beyond me.

We know now what the Government's thinking is. It wants a system designed to make life easier for the State at the expense of people living with disability or caring for somebody with a disability. It proposed a medical approach that sought to categorise people into tiers based on how capable they were to work, as decided by the State, rather than a social model that seeks to support people in need. There was little or no recognition of the costs people with disabilities and their carers face and the plan ignored the growing problems with disability poverty, with even the highest level support, the so-called tier 1, being significantly below the poverty line. We already know the cost of disability in Ireland. in 2021, a report by the Department of Social Protection estimated the cost of living with a disability to be between €8,700 and €12,300 per annum. Accounting for inflation, the cost would now be between €9,800 and €13,800.

The Green Paper was a totally inhumane approach to force people to work, not to support them. It viewed people as commodities that could be categorised, designated and costed. It sought to put the burden of overcoming employment barriers on those who faced the barriers, not those who have created them. The Department of Social Protection indicated that it expected potentially 50% of the existing recipients of social protection payments would be assessed as tier 3. We could have seen half of those in receipt of disability payments being forced back to work. We know just how dangerous that would be from looking at the barbaric disability reform the Tory Party has implemented in England.

A survey carried out in conjunction with the Centre for Welfare Reform in 2021 found that in Britain, among those engaging with the UK Department of Work and Pensions section on employment matters with regard to disability payments, 13% of respondents said they had attempted suicide as a result and 61% said they had considered suicide. The Government has obviously not learned any lessons from the massive damage and hurt the Tories unleashed on people with disabilities in Britain. It wanted a cost-saving exercise at the expense of the well-being of people living with disabilities. This has happened twice now and it is why I came out strongly for a "No" vote in the care referendum on 8 March when the Government tried to change the State's responsibility for people with disability and their carers.

The Green Paper sought to implement a system in which, in the worst-case scenario, people could have been forced back to work and, in the best-case scenario, forced to live on supports that are below the poverty line. We need a system that treats people with disabilities with dignity, not as objects to be costed and categorised, one that recognises the cost of disability and care and that provides people living with disabilities and carers with a decent standard of living. We need to directly target the real problems in our system with disability welfare and the high levels of disability poverty and deprivation. This should be based on the implementation of the UNCRPD as a basis for a social model of supports and rights.

I hope the Minister supports the Disability (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2023 proposed by Senator Tom Clonan this week but, judging from the Green Paper and the care referendum, I have no faith the Government will implement such a system.

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