Emergency Winter Payment for Disabled People: Motion [Private Members]
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-28
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Eoin Hayes (SD), Dublin Bay South

I thank all the Deputies who spoke in support of this motion and also those who did not speak but who I know support it. Regardless, I am very disappointed by the Government’s response. I know I am not alone and that I speak for tens of thousands of disabled people when I say it is a great shame that the Government has not sought to support them adequately this winter. The Minister spoke of a supplementary welfare scheme totalling 3,000 recipients in 2025. This motion affects ten times that number, namely 310,000, so the Government should do better.
This is my first Private Members’ motion in this House, having watched many others. I was not hopeful that the Government would relent on an Opposition motion. I was disappointed by its response but not surprised. It raises the question as to when the Government will respond to the urgent needs of disabled people. How many briefings for TDs must be held? How many committee rooms must be filled with ordinary people forced to ask for help? How many motions, votes or speeches are needed? What will it take to break through the callousness of a Government that would leave disabled people cold, hungry and impoverished? What should I tell them about their Government? What defence is there for neglect?
Government is not easy in any country and I do not doubt the sincerity or good intentions of anyone in this House who comes in every day to work on behalf of his or her constituents, but surely it does not sit well with anyone here, in government or opposition, that those outside this House in poverty and deprivation are reliant on the very privileged few who sit here dry and warm. There is an enormous privilege associated with debating motions like this one and voting on the laws that govern our country. There is also an enormous responsibility. Hundreds of thousands of people are struggling with the choice between heat and food, and between their children’s needs and their own. I am referring to those in arrears on their electricity bills, those who scour supermarket shelves for the best deals on food, those who in record numbers have sought help from the Society of St.Vincent de Paul to meet their basic needs, and others. I am so conscious that there are too many in this country who do without and who are not given the immense privilege that I and everyone else in this House have been granted. That is frightening but it is not alarmist, dangerous or misleading, unless the Minister wants to accuse the Society of St. Vincent de Paul of being misleading. I am referring to the reality on the ground. It is the reality this Government has designed.
I find it hard to wrap my head around the fact that the Government’s answer to this motion is "No". I ask it to consider its great privilege in holding the purse strings of this country and passing the laws that direct where they are loosened, and, perhaps, to consider that this great privilege carries a responsibility to those who are vulnerable outside this Chamber and that there is no better example of these people than those with disabilities.
Is the Government so distrustful of the Opposition that even when it tables constructive motions – motions aligned with the programme for Government, motions that are fiscally sound and motions targeted at the most vulnerable – it will not relent? Has Irish politics come to leaving disabled people impoverished, because it was not the Government’s idea? What does the Dáil do with that reality? What does the electorate do with that reality? Did people really vote for a Fianna Fáil that leaves disabled people in poverty and cuts their incomes? Is that really the character of our country? Somehow, knowing many voters, I think not. I think I know the great character of the great people of this country and think they would be ashamed of how the Government will vote tonight. The Government should be ashamed too.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-28/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:34+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-28