Social Welfare Payments Dail Éireann — 2026-02-26 ============================================================ Peter Roche (FG), Galway East Rare diseases collectively affect of thousands of people across our State. What makes the situation different is that the State's systems were never designed around lifelong, complex conditions that do not fit neat diagnostic or disability categories. Parents are becoming full-time carers, care co-ordinators and medical advocates, often overnight and, indeed, permanently, while simultaneously experiencing a collapse in their household incomes and a rise in unavoidable costs. They must repeatedly prove eligibility for assistance that measures disability in static terms. --- 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/2026-02-26/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:42+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-02-26