Sorca Clarke (Longford-Westmeath, Sinn Fein)

Budget 2026 was a serious step backwards for people with disabilities. They are angry and rightly so. The Indecon report commissioned by the Government in 2021 put the financial cost of disability in the region of €12,000 per year. An ESRI study showed that households with a disabled member face significant financial burdens ad are at a very high risk of poverty. For people who are unable to work due to a disability the 2024 Central Statistics Office, CSO, poverty figures showed that one in five live in consistent poverty, two in five live in enforced deprivation and are unable to afford the essentials such as heating and new clothes. The at risk of poverty rate increased by 5% last year to 32.5% and when the one-off cost-of-living measures are taken out that at risk of poverty rate was actually 37.4%. Government Ministers and backbenchers have been beside themselves in the past week saying that not everything can be done in one budget but how long does the Government want people with disabilities to actually wait?

The talk that the Government may consider a cost of disability payment in next year's budget is completely detached from the reality of how poverty affects disabled people in the here and now, as if subjecting hundreds of thousands of people to the harm of poverty and material deprivation in the coming year can be simply undone with the tick of a pen this time next year. The Minister has time. Will he develop and introduce a cost of disability payment? Will he increase the disability allowance and other disability-contingent social welfare payments by €20 from this January as an interim measure to begin to recognise the additional costs that come from living with a disability? Will he deliver a lump sum payment for people with disabilities this month to provide immediate recognition of these additional costs? It was cruel, and quite frankly unjustifiable, to pull supports from a group of people who experience such high levels of poverty and deprivation. The Government's budget goes nowhere near what needs to be done to support our disabled community and give it what it deserves in return. The Minister has the opportunity. He can do the right thing. He can make meaningful steps to ensure anybody living with a disability is not also living in fear of how he or she will heat his or her home, keep the lights on, or put petrol or diesel in their car.

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