Social Welfare Payments
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-15
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Paul Murphy (PBP), Dublin South-West

If the Minister wants to quote payments, we can quote payments. The Irish Wheelchair Association, Access for All Ireland and the Disability Federation of Ireland have done very good work in making people aware of the cruel cuts that the Government has introduced in the last budget. The disability support grant was €400 previously. It has been removed, meaning a loss of €400. The living alone allowance saw a loss of €200. The fuel allowance saw a loss of €160. The October double payment saw a loss of €254. The loss of the electricity credit was another loss of €250. This is a total net loss for disabled people of €1,404.
There was a powerful briefing in the audiovisual room yesterday, where we heard from all these organisations and from disabled people about the extreme crisis that they were in. One woman said her life was a balancing act between heating her home or feeding her children. Another disabled woman spoke about how she was no longer able to afford to put her child in a crèche. These are horrendous stories and the Government has made these people's lives worse. It could reverse that. We will come to the next question on an emergency payment while we are waiting for this annual cost-of-disability payment to come through.

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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