Disability Services Dail Éireann — 2026-04-23 ============================================================ Emer Higgins (FG), Dublin Mid-West On the Deputy's last point, the WRC pay agreement reached in 2025 between Government Departments and unions includes funding for a phased 9.25% pay increase that will benefit workers in section 39 voluntary organisations. The agreement also includes an automatic linkage to future public sector pay agreements for those workers to match all future pay increases. In delivering on the 9.25% pay increase, the Government is improving the ability of service providers to actively recruit and retain staff and supporting the overall sustainability of the sector. The Taoiseach has convened a meeting of the Cabinet committee on disability for Monday. That meeting will be attended by me and the Minister, Deputy Foley, and our officials, as well as the Minister for housing and officials from his Department. We will discuss future planning when it comes to the buildings we need to increase capacity to deliver more residential and respite care across Ireland. --- 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/2026-04-23/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:48+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-04-23