Disability Matters: Statements
Seanad Éireann — 2026-04-22
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Margaret Murphy O'Mahony (FF), Labour Panel

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit. I welcome the opportunity to contribute to these important statements on disability matters. At the outset, I want to be very clear. Fianna Fáil welcomes these statements, and we welcome them because they reflect a Government that recognises that supporting disabled peopled is a central priority, not an add-on or an afterthought.
Disabled people continue to face real and persistent barriers in our society, barriers in education, employment, transport, housing, healthcare and civic life. This Government acknowledges these challenges and, more importantly, is acting to address them through sustained investment, structural reform and rights-based policy.
That commitment is reflected at the highest level of the Government. An Taoiseach, Deputy Micheál Martin, established a disability unit within the Department of the Taoiseach to bring renewed focus, accountability and urgency to disability matters. This is not symbolic. It is a clear statement that disability policy must be co-ordinated, monitored and driven centrally across all Departments.
This work is rightly anchored in the National Human Rights Strategy for Disabled People 2025-2030, which is advancing the realisation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. This strategy sets out an ambitious but necessary five-year programme to tackle the barriers that disabled people encounter in everyday life and to ensure they can live full lives of their own choosing.
Budget 2026 represents the first major step in turning that vision into a reality, and I will return to that shortly. The national human rights strategy is grounded in clear principles: dignity, autonomy, participation and equality. It moves us decisively away from a charity or deficit-based model and towards one that recognises disabled people as rights holders. The strategy commits every Department and State agency to delivery across five key pillars: inclusive education; employment; independent living and participation; health and well-being; and transport and mobility. Crucially, this is a whole-of-government approach. No single Department can deliver meaningful change in isolation.
The whole-of-government approach is evident in budget 2026, which delivers a record €3.8 billion allocation to the Department of Children, Disability and Equality for specialist disability services. This represents a 20% year-on-year increase, an unprecedented level of investment that will stabilise funding, support workforce planning and expand essential services across the country.
This funding will enable the expansion of residential care, respite services, and personal assistant and home support hours. It will support over 9,000 people in residential services, deliver thousands of additional respite nights and day services, and provide approximately 1,400 new day service places for school leavers with disabilities. Importantly, this investment also supports decongregation and independent living, ensuring more disabled people can live in their communities close to their families, friends and other supports.
Disabled children and their families have waited far too long for timely supports. Budget 2026 makes meaningful progress in this area. In health, funding is provided to recruit 150 additional staff for children’s disability network teams to address therapy waiting lists and to continue the assessment of need targeted wait list initiative, delivering approximately 6,000 clinical assessments next year. In education, the budget provides €3 billion for special education, supporting around 250,000 children with special educational needs. This includes additional speech education teachers, almost 1,700 new SNAs, up to 3,000 new special classes and special school places, and expanded school-based therapy services. For early years, increased investment in the access and inclusion model ensures more children with disabilities can fully participate in the early childhood care and education, ECCE, programme in inclusive settings.
Employment remains one of the strongest routes to independence and social inclusion. Budget 2026 strengthens supports to help disabled people access and remain in work. The wage subsidy scheme has been significantly enhanced for the first time since 2022, with increased hourly rates and expanded eligibility to include people who acquire a disability or experience severe conditions. These measures will support thousands of workers and employers. Critically, budget 2026 removed disincentives to employment. People on disability allowance or the blind pension who move into work will be able to retain the fuel allowance and the back to work family dividend is extended to more disabled people. These changes recognise that taking up work should not mean falling off a financial cliff.
The budget also strengthens disability supports across health and well-being, from mental health staffing increases to oral health, audiology services and meals on wheels.
Participation in social, cultural and sporting life is addressed through targeted funding for accessible tourism, digital inclusion, inclusive sport facilities and community-based initiatives. These investments recognise that inclusion does not end at the clinic door or at the classroom door.
Accessible transport is essential for independence. Budget 2026 continues significant capital investment, ensuring that all new transport projects follow universal design principles, while funding retrofit programmes to improve existing buses, trains and stations.
The Government also continues important legislative progress. The Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) (Amendment) Act 2026, signed into law last month, ensures that all wards of court will have their capacity reviewed, providing clarity, legal certainty and respect for each individual.
There is still work to do. Waiting lists remain too long and workforce challenges persist, but the direction of travel is very clear. This Government is delivering on its commitments to disabled people, grounded in rights, backed by record investment and driven by accountability at the centre of this Government. The establishment of the disability unit, the delivery of budget 2026 and the implementation of the national human rights strategy together represent not just progress, but a genuine shift in how disability policy is approached in this State.
We must continue to listen to disabled people and their families, to co-design solutions and to hold ourselves accountable for delivery. This is how we build a society where disabled people are not merely supported, but empowered to live full, independent and meaningful lives.

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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/seanad/2026-04-22/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:50+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-22