Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)

Disability issues and disability services are an absolute priority for this Government. That is why one of the things the Deputy will have seen published in the past number of months was the new national human rights strategy for disabled people, which is a really good piece of work. A huge amount of work was done with representative groups and with people with disabilities directly. It is a Government strategy that involves all parts of government. Because the Deputy has raised it, I will deal with it directly. He raised a very specific issue in relation to costs. It is a very valid and important issue. All aspects of how the State's policies interact with people with a disability respect their human rights and enable them to live their lives. We took a number of decisions on permanent increases in this budget. We were always very clear that we were moving away from the temporary measures that were brought in at a time inflation was extraordinarily high. We were very clear on that and we have to be clear on it because we have to make sure that we move back to a regular rhythm of an annual budget with clear parameters that works.

As part of that, the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Calleary, specifically increased the disability allowance, increased the domiciliary care allowance and made improvements to payments for carers as well. I agree with the Deputy, the Minister agrees with him and the Government as a whole agrees with him on the importance of a cost-of-disability payment. I am pleased to tell him that there was a meeting as recently as this week where groups representing people with a disability were in with the Department of Social Protection to discuss the work on designing that payment. That is something that the Minister, Deputy Calleary, is leading on, something on which he will have the support of Government as well.

We also made another change so that people who are leaving the disability allowance to move into employment are able to retain their fuel allowance, something people had sought for quite a period of time. This is the week in which the Christmas bonus is being played out. It is the last of the direct one-off cost-of-living payments to help people at this period. It is being paid out to people in receipt of disability allowance and indeed other payments too.

The budget did, though, make a very big investment in disabilities. Even organisations have accepted this in other areas. In the capital budget for disability to deliver the specialist disability infrastructure that we need across the country, the respite facilities, the residential homes, the multidisciplinary teams, we have seen a doubling of the current capital levels. We had €278 million announced in terms of disability services in the capital plan only this week. Quite rightly we also saw a very significant increase in the level of funding for disability services in the HSE with hundreds of millions of euro extra in funding provided. It was one of the largest areas of increase in the budget but I accept and Government accepts the work on the permanent cost-of-disability payment is an important piece of work. We are engaging collaboratively on that with groups, organisations and people with a disability. I know it is something that the Minister, Deputy Calleary, will be working on in the months ahead.

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