Conor McGuinness (Waterford, Sinn Fein)

The Minister will know from the statistics in his Department that people with disabilities and their families are among those most at risk of poverty in the State. They have been abandoned in budget 2026. That is not me as a member of the Opposition saying it. It is what they are telling us. They feel abandoned because they have been abandoned. This is a budget that bears the fingerprints of Fine Gael and the austerity era in every single line. This Government has pulled the rug from under people with disabilities. It has taken away the supports that were keeping their households afloat and replaced them with a pitiful €10 increase in the disability allowance. This is an increase that does not even keep pace with real inflation. Food prices, rents and energy bills are all rising and the response of the Minister's Government is a slap in the face to those who already face the highest cost of living in the State.

The Government's own research has shown that the additional cost of disability is between €9,000 and €11,000 every single year. We heard the Taoiseach dismissing the ESRI earlier today, but it tells us that households with a disabled member are at a very high risk of poverty and that two in five children in such households grow up at a risk of poverty after housing costs are removed from the equation, yet Fine Gael, with the support and leadership of Fianna Fáil it would seem, looks the other way. The Government cut the cost-of-living supports that people depended on and refused to introduce a permanent cost-of-disability payment, a measure that has been repeatedly called for by advocacy groups, Sinn Féin and people with disabilities themselves.

Our alternative budget set out a different path. It called for a €20 increase in the disability allowance, a €300 lump-sum payment to all core welfare reciptients, a €25 increase in the domiciliary care allowance and a €450 energy credit. These are real and practical measures to help people to live with dignity. Instead of fairness and decency, the Government has chosen indifference and neglect.

It is utterly detached from the reality of life for people with disabilities to suggest that a cost-of-disability payment might be considered next year, as if poverty can be put on hold. It is an insult. It follows the insult we saw in the general election campaign last year with the then Taoiseach, now Tánaiste. We see that carried forward a year and it is as if nothing has been learned in that time. Our motion calls for justice, an immediate lump-sum payment this winter and the development of a permanent cost-of-disability payment and. It calls on the Government to reverse course, to stop ignoring those who are suffering most and to recognise the basic truth that poverty and the maintenance of poverty is a political choice and it is the wrong one.

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