Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent)
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65. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the estimated cost of introducing a weekly €20 cost of disability payment; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [39427/17]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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There are no plans to establish a “cost of disability” payment within the social protection system. People with disabilities are not a homogeneous group, and, as such, have widely differing needs with the result that any additional costs of disability would not therefore arise to the same extent in all cases. Some costs associated with disability are already addressed across schemes provided by a number of agencies such as the Health Service Executive and also the Revenue Commissioners through certain tax reliefs and other supports. The further introduction of a “cost of disability” payment would therefore be a major undertaking requiring clear definitions of qualifying conditions and research into the prevalence of these conditions leading to estimates of the numbers of persons who would potentially qualify. One indication of the scale of potential additional programme spend would be to estimate the additional annual cost of increasing the main social protection schemes that are targeted at long-term illness and disability conditions.

It is estimated that the annual cost of increasing invalidity pension, disability allowance and domiciliary care allowance by the equivalent of €20 per week would be of the order of €240 million. It is likely that it would also require significant administrative spending in establishing the information technology and other systems that would be required to administer such a payment. Increases to other payments including pensions may also have to be considered in such a scenario where recipients are likely to experience limiting conditions because of their disability.

According to recent results from Census 2016, there were some 643,000 people with a disability in the State in April 2016. The cost of introducing a cost of Disability Payment to all of these even if not in receipt of a disability payment would be considerably higher than the estimate based solely on those in receipt of disability related payments above.