Social Welfare Payments
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-15
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Dara Calleary (FF), Mayo

The Department of Social Protection provides a range of income support payments for disabled people. There are approximately 231,000 recipients of disability income support payments, amounting to an estimated expenditure of €3.24 billion in 2025. The Government recognises the significant additional costs that disabled people face in their daily lives and is committed to improving outcomes for disabled people by introducing permanent measures. That is why the programme for Government includes a range of commitments to support disabled people. Our programme for Government commitments will be advanced over the lifetime of the Government, having regard to the overall policy and budgetary context.
The programme for Government commits to introducing a permanent annual cost-of-disability support payment. My Department will lead a strategic focus network, with the involvement of other relevant Departments and agencies, as a commitment under the national human rights strategy for disabled people. The work of this network, which will include disabled people and their advocates, will inform the approach to be taken in delivering on the programme for Government commitment. My officials have been asked to expedite this work with a view to bringing a proposal to the Government in the first half of this year. Officials have already held meetings with a number of organisations to discuss the possible structure and content of the strategic focus network on the cost of disability. My officials met a number of organisations on 2 December at my Department's disability consultative forum, at which the cost-of-disability strategic focus network was the main agenda item. A meeting with the Disabled Persons Organisations Network is scheduled for Friday, 23 January.
The views of disabled people and all relevant research, such as the Indecon report and the more recent ESRI report, will be considered by my Department when progressing this work. To reiterate what I said earlier, we will also be having public consultation where we look forward to views from across the House in relation to what the permanent cost-of-disability payment should look like.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-15/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:30+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-15