Social Welfare Benefits
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-18
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Dara Calleary (FF), Mayo

The Deputy's proposals would drive people into unemployment, reduce our tax bases and reduce our ability to actually address this because without a sustainable economy and without sustainable resources, we cannot make these kinds of payments. That is not a tough choice. The Deputy is making a choice that will impair our ability to address and assist people with disabilities.
What we are trying to do is have a programme that works and has a backup. We had 1,173 responses to the process. That was an extraordinary response, and each response has been gone through. There were 1,086 responses from individuals and 87 responses from groups and other organisations.
The Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and the Minister of State, Deputy Canney, as the three Government leaders, attended the cost-of-disability summit on 13 May and are very much engaged in this process. They took time out of their diaries to engage with it and listen. We have done a lot of pre-work in relation to this. This will not be something that will be landed on colleagues in government when it comes, and I continue to work on this daily. We had a very good session of about an hour and half at the Oireachtas committee last week where we went through the proposals of other parties that were willing to put choices on the line in relation to this payment.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-06-18/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:51+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-18