Many thanks to the committee for inviting us to speak. The Disability Federation of Ireland, DFI, was delighted to contribute to the citizens' assembly deliberations last year and welcomed the thoughtful and strong recommendations that came through from the committee, which reflected many of the concerns that disability organisations, including all of us here, have been raising for many years.
While the focus of the assembly was on gender equality, and we know disabled women often face discrimination on multiple fronts, it is notable that many of the recommendations we are discussing today would actually benefit all people with disabilities. They would also help Ireland to meet its obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD.
It is important to note at the start that we could have a full session on any one of the recommendations we are discussing today, but nevertheless I am sure we will all do our best to give some thoughts to the committee for its own reflections.
As my opener, I want to pose a question to the committee. The most recently published 2021 Central Statistics Office survey on income and living conditions, SILC, poverty data shows that disabled people are now five times more likely to live in consistent poverty than the general population. The data shows that 19.2% of those unable to work due to long-standing conditions such as disability or health issues live in consistent poverty, while the national average is 4%. Also, the at risk of poverty rate for this cohort for 2021 was 39.1%. This rate increased by almost 6% last year, while the national average at risk of poverty rate declined to 11.6%. These statistics are very stark.
My question, for this committee, and for our country, is whether we believe it is acceptable that people in Ireland, by virtue of being disabled, should be locked into poverty, a significantly lower standard of living, and the extreme stress that goes with trying to live on an insufficient weekly amount. It was very heartening for many of us that the citizens who deliberated on this did not believe this should be the case and gave parliamentarians like the committee members a very strong mandate to take action to change this deeply unfair situation.
We have seen recently how powerful our social protection system can be in protecting our society from poverty. The pandemic unemployment payment was set at a much more adequate rate of €350 a week, and the 2021 poverty data show how effective that policy choice was, with the general at risk of poverty rate declining, even with the substantial amount of economic upheaval caused by the pandemic.
Disabled people, however, have found this very difficult to watch because they continue to be expected to live for the rest of their lives on a much lower disability allowance rate. At that stage, it was €203 a week, now increased to €208. Two in five people who rely on this payment to live are at risk of poverty. This shows that our current social protection provision is completely inadequate. We know that last year's Indecon report on the cost of disability documented what many of us here have been highlighting for a very long time. It concluded that people with disabilities have annual extra costs ranging from €8,700 to €12,300, although that can reach up to €23,610 or more for those with multiple disabilities. The basic annual income provided by disability allowance is €10,816. It can be seen that those sums do not add up.
DFI is increasingly receiving alarming emails and phone calls from disabled individuals who are struggling to make ends meet due to the cost-of-living crisis. Even though the Government had the cost of disability report in hand for budget 2022, disability allowance was only increased by €5, the same as every other payment. This was an increase of 2.5%. As we know, inflation is now running at 7%.
I want to quote from one of the emails we received recently because it illustrates the problem with painful eloquence. Permission has been sought from the author to quote this email. It is a fairly long extract.
[Disability allowance] does not even cover essential outgoings, even when stripped back to the lowest amounts possible. I use as little fuel as possible, yet cannot pay my bills without going without food for days on end. The fuel allowance has been cut off since the second week of April, even though it is still cold at night. It seems inhuman that our government treats the most vulnerable in society this way. Such extreme poverty amounts to social exclusion, a large 'no entry' sign on every ordinary pleasure. A €5 cup of coffee with a friend is an unaffordable expense on an already overdrawn account. Regular and unexpected household costs set me back for months, particularly if I cannot repair things myself, like broken blinds, boiler or washing machine repairs. People need to have money in their pockets in order to get out of their homes and mix with the real world. Social isolation is not an acceptable solution to the misery of having no money to join the rest of humanity in ordinary, even inexpensive, pursuits. Even with the living alone allowance, fuel allowance and household benefit, I am constantly overdrawn due to the necessity to eat and keep warm, yet stay connected with friends, on such a miserable sum.
Acting on recommendation 14 to set social protection rates above the poverty line is thus extremely urgent for disabled people. It is also important to remember that the members of the citizens' assembly indicated they were willing to pay to support increased social welfare provision and a more equal Ireland. Some 95.6% of citizens indicated that, if necessary, they were also prepared to support and pay higher taxes based on the principle of ability to pay and to make the recommendations a reality.
I have concentrated mostly on the social protection recommendation as the committee has already heard a number of inputs on care and, as I believe, Independent Living Movement Ireland, ILMI, and Disabled Women Ireland, DWI, are likely to make strong and important contributions on this. However, I will add a couple of short lines on care before I conclude. People with disabilities are often forced to rely on others, including family members, for care and support. Many family carers step into the caring role because there are no, or completely insufficient, State supports available for their family member. If the State provided and properly resourced independent living options, this could remove the necessity for family carers to compensate for and mitigate a lack of state provision.
As a result, DFI considers recommendation 10 to be extremely important. It addresses one of the most important rights for people with disabilities, namely, the right to live independently. We and our members have been calling on the State to support and resource this right for decades. We were pleased that this right was so strongly supported by the citizens' assembly, with a unanimous vote to support it. Ensuring a person is resourced to live independently includes providing a whole range of services a person may require and that includes personal assistant support, assistive technology, accessible public housing and transport, and an income above the poverty line, all of which we have called for over many years. We have also long-supported the creation of a statutory right to home care and we are an active member of the Home Care Coalition, a group of civil society organisations advocating for this right.
I thank the committee members for listening and I look forward to the discussion.
