Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-14
============================================================

Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central

First of all, the Deputy has made an assertion and equated the ending of the one-off cost-of-living measures that were introduced during the height of the Ukraine energy crisis and so forth with cuts. That is wrong and he knows that. That is the first assertion, premised upon which his arguments are made, that is flawed. We must embed into the permanent social protection system, employment system, transport system, education system and health system supports that are permanent for people with a disability. That is what I intend to do and that is what this Government intends to do, through the Cabinet subcommittee on disability and through the new disability unit within my Department. We are prioritising the budgetary measures towards disability and will continue to do so. The ESRI's analysis in terms of the last budget bares that out.
I accept the one-off measures had an impact right across society but it simply was not fiscally sustainable to continue with one-off measures, bottom line. However, what is sustainable is, in terms of our various budgets through social protection, education and health, creating additional and permanent resources for people with disabilities. That is what we have been doing and will continue to do.
As regards the cost of disability issue, first of all, in the budget we delivered a record 20% increase in disability services funding through the Department for children and disability, increasing that to about €3.8 billion. That is to invest in services, which is needed by any yardstick.
We have to continue that and consistently increase it over time.
We have significantly prioritised education, particularly investment in special education and special classes right across the board, higher education and independent living, particularly in terms of participation in third level education and research for students with disabilities.
On the cost of disability support payment, the Minister, Deputy Calleary, is leading this work in close partnership with disabled people, advocates and the organisations involved and will come to the Government with proposals in the first half of this year. Analysis by the ESRI and the Department of Finance confirms the impacts of the decisions we took in the budget in terms of the at risk of poverty rate across the population falling by 1.7% and the population affected by disability reducing by 3.8%. Older people felt the largest impact and then for people with disabilities, it fell by 3.8%. The measures we took in the budget had impact and they are permanent measures. That relates to social protection. There was the €20 increase in domiciliary care allowance and, as the Deputy knows, the earnings disregard for the carer's allowance for a single person and for a couple expanded.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-14/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:30+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-14