Barry Heneghan (Dublin Bay North, Independent)
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588. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection what initiatives are in place to raise public and cross-Government awareness of the economic challenges faced by people with disabilities; and whether disability-related poverty will be highlighted in upcoming Social Inclusion Monitor or National Anti-Poverty Strategy updates. [25633/25]

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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The Government recognises the additional costs associated with having a disability and is committed to improving outcomes for disabled people.

The Government has prioritised the development of a new National Disability Strategy, a cross-governmental strategy that will have a focus on improving access to services and bringing down these extra costs. That work is led by the Department of Children, Disability and Equality. Alongside this, in the Programme for Government, we have committed to introducing a permanent Annual Cost of Disability Support Payment.

This will build on progress made over the last number of years, where we took steps to recognise the additional costs associated with having a disability. In the last three Budgets we brought forward an extensive range of cost of living measures to support people with disabilities and their families, with 2024 being the third year in a row that we paid a cost-of-living lump sum in the winter for people on disability payments.

Disability-related poverty is a very important challenge and will be included in the upcoming update to the Roadmap for Social Inclusion 2020-2025. The Roadmap aims to reduce the number of people in Ireland in poverty in Ireland and increase social inclusion for the most disadvantaged.

The public consultation on the successor to the Roadmap for Social Inclusion is open until the end of June 2025. The Department of Social Protection welcomes submissions, comments, ideas and suggestions from people and representative groups outlining people’s experience of poverty and social exclusion, and suggested ways that these situations could be improved, which might be included in the next strategy. The public consultation would welcome views related to poverty related to persons with disabilities.

The Social Inclusion Forum, was recently held in Croke Park. It was hosted by my Department in partnership with the European Anti-Poverty Network and Community Work Ireland. The Forum was preceded by six regional preparatory workshops organised around the country by the event partners, which discussed solutions to poverty related to persons with disabilities. The Social Inclusion Forum programme included a specific workshop on the challenges faced by persons with disabilities, which was attended by persons with disabilities and disabled persons organisations.

I trust this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.