I am grateful for the opportunity to talk to the committee. It is an unusual day because the Disability Bill is published today. I have left my colleagues in the office standing over the fax machine, reading pages of the Bill.
The Disability Federation of Ireland is an umbrella body for disability organisations. It has links with approximately 150 disability organisations of every make, shape and size. They deal with all sorts of disabilities, ranging from intellectual to physical to sensory. In our daily work we help these organisations to provide better services and they come to us with their problems and so forth. As the federation has been in existence for 40 years, it is a well-established organisation.
The focus of today's work is on the cost of disability payment and disability allowance. I do not need to over-emphasise to the committee the link between disability and poverty in Ireland. It is an inextricable link. Any studies that have been carried out over the years, such as those by Combat Poverty and the ESRI, on people living in poverty show that people with disabilities are a core group. An interesting study carried out last year by the Department of Social and Family Affairs into payments given to people with disabilities and long-term illness payments, showed that households headed by a person with a disability are at the highest risk of living in consistent poverty. One is four times more likely to live in consistent poverty if one has a disability. One need not question, therefore, the justification for us being before the committee today or the issues surrounding disability and poverty.
This year the ESRI published a study on why, given the changes in the economy and society in Ireland over the last ten years, these people continue to live in consistent poverty and why they have not progressed. The institute identified the lack of investment over the years in groups of people, such as those with disabilities, that is causing the poverty to continue. My submission to the committee outlines one comparison between Ireland and Denmark with regard to the level of investment in social protection. If we do not invest in people with disabilities, they will continue to live in poverty.
Many people have a difficulty understanding what the cost of disability payment involves. The expression, "cost of disability payment", has been around for some time and there is a simple way of explaining it. Let us take two households living in adjoining houses. One household is headed by a person who is unemployed and the other is headed by somebody who is disabled. At present, there are similar State inputs going into those households but the outgoings are different. The outgoings from the household headed by a disabled person will be related to and compensating for the disability. There is, therefore, no equity in that situation.
From a policy point of view, the concept of a cost of disability payment dates from 1996 and the report of the Commission on the Status of People with Disabilities. The report covered a wide range of issues, including education, training and so forth. One of the commission's key recommendations was a cost of disability payment. The commission gave a broad definition of that payment. It included equipment, that is, an aid, appliance, wheelchair or an adapted bathroom and so forth; mobility and communications, such as reliance on taxis for transport; living costs, including heating, food and clothing, which is a distinct strand of the cost of disability; and medical costs, such as drugs, speech therapy, occupational therapy and care assistants.
The commission offered a broad definition in 1996. In 1999, an official Government review was carried out on the commission's work. What emerged was a question about the scope of this payment, where it would end and how it would be administered. In 2000, as part of the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness, there was an agreement to carry out a feasibility study on the cost of disability payment. How would one do it and what would it be? A working group was established by the Department of Social and Family Affairs, the Department of Health and Children and the Department of Finance to carry out the study. The group has met over the last four years and, as part of its deliberations, it commissioned an extensive amount of research which was carried out by the National Disability Authority, with Indecon. That study, Disability and the Cost of Living, looks at what other countries do, how to address the payment and how to administer it. It found that in Ireland the extra cost of living amounted to approximately €40 per week. That is an average figure, although it is linked somewhat to severity of disability, to address the issue of the additional cost.
The research firmly justified the need for the payment. A household where a person has a disability would need to have extra income to alleviate and meet the extra living costs. It saw things such as transport, medical costs, aids and appliances and significant one-off expenditures on getting the house extended or the bathroom converted, as separate issues. It was the daily living costs that would have to be addressed and the best way to address them was through a social welfare payment.
That covers the period from 1996 to the study carried out by the NDA and the working group. The DFI is a member of social partnership and, as part of that, the community and voluntary pillar had an opportunity to meet with the working group on the cost of disability. At the meeting last week, it was recognised that many individual payments currently exist, such as the disabled driver's grant, the mobility allowance and so forth. It was felt that the group would now focus on these payments and what needs to be done in terms of tightening them up. However, the working group was silent on how to progress in introducing the cost of disability payment. That is worrying. We see a clear distinction, as the NDA saw in its study, between issues such as one's eligibility for the medical card, changing the criteria and so forth and responding to the extra but ordinary daily living costs which the cost of disability allowance payment would help to meet.
In its budget submission to be launched in October, the DFI will call for the payment of €40 to be introduced, initially for people in receipt of a means-tested social welfare payment. People in receipt of, for example, disability allowance or blind pension would receive the payment first and it would later be rolled out to all people with disabilities over the subsequent two budgets.
Members of the DFI found the NDA study interesting. Over the last four years we have promoted this issue in our pre-budget submissions and last year we decided to push the boat out and put a figure on it. We did not have a research grant. The approach we took was to look at when the State last intervened like this. The only comparison we could make was with the children's allowance. Last year, we called for the introduction of a payment, similar to the children's allowance, of €130 per month. The State had already made that step; it did not choose some children but made the payment for every child. We see a similarity with the payment of cost of disability. We were not far off the mark with regard to €40 per week and the current payment of children's allowance. It was nice to have one's estimates vindicated.
With regard to disability allowance, one stark fact serves as a reminder of the reliance of people with disabilities on disability allowance. A total of 4.2% of the population are unemployed while 70% of people with disabilities are unemployed. As considerable numbers of people with disabilities are unemployed, there is significant reliance on the disability allowance payment. The disability allowance payment is linked to the national anti-poverty strategy targets with which I am sure the committee is familiar. To meet those targets, we ask that the payment be increased by €14 in the forthcoming budget and that over the next three budgets, the payment be increased by €47.90. Again, that is just to meet the agreed NAPS targets.
A separate point I would like to emphasise and an issue we have brought up for many years, as have other organisations, is the lack of payment of the disability allowance to those who entered institutional care pre-1999. I am sure the committee is familiar with this issue as well. If one entered institutional care prior to 1999, one is not entitled to receive disability allowance. Obviously, this is an issue of equity. One can imagine that people living in institutional care for that length of time have already lost their sense of individuality. We are exacerbating that by not recognising that they should receive the payment. In last year's budget, there was movement in regard to streamlining the pocket-money payments in terms of how they were paid and to even them out throughout the country. However, that is really not the issue. The issue is that there should be equity for people living in institutions since pre-1999.
A final point, which is topical today given the publication of the Disability Bill, mainstreaming and all the issues we hope will be in that Bill, is the need for cross-departmental work. The issue we have been promoting through the disability legislation consultative group, DCLG, in our work on the Disability Bill and the equal citizen document, is that need for cross-departmental work. The disability issue can really only be tackled by cross-departmental work. The Department of Health and Children cannot solve it nor can the Departments of Social and Family Affairs or Transport. It can only be solved by working together. I know it is a long-standing issue in Irish administration but the disability issue brings it to the fore. It is only by working together that the issue can be addressed.
There is a need the Department of Social and Family Affairs to have a key working relationship with the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. How does one move that number of people from being reliant on the disability allowance? People remain on disability allowance for key reasons, including fear of losing their allowance, losing their medical cards and so on. It is only by working with the Department which offers the training, employment and supports that will we see a movement from that reliance on disability allowance.
On the issue of mainstreaming — today is a topical day to talk about it — we are looking for payments currently under the Department of Health and Children to be moved to the Department of Social and Family Affairs. The payments include the domiciliary care allowance and the mobility allowance. We do not believe they belong under the Department of Health and Children. It has more to do with the agenda of de-medicalising disability. People with disability are often seen as being sick. They are not sick but are just living with a disability. We have seen that movement already with the successful move of the disability allowance. We would like to see those other two payments move across as well.
We are looking for the disability proofing of the actions of the Department of Social and Family Affairs and all Departments, especially around budget time but also during the year. It is sometimes an oversight but actions and decisions taken at budget time can negatively affect people with disability. I know we are used the concepts of gender and poverty proofing. Decisions should be looked at from the point of view of people with disability and how they will affect their payments and lifestyle.
It is important to thank the Department of Social and Family Affairs and to show our appreciation of it. It has a disability forum which meets approximately four to five times a year. We have found it excellent. Given the publication of the Disability Bill today and the sectoral plans coming from six of the key Departments, we will tell them to look at the work the Department of Social and Family Affairs is doing with the disability sector. Through that work, we gain an understanding of its thinking and it gains an understanding of ours. We are able to give it feedback from members of our organisation about how different changes have come about. I compliment the Department on its work.
We are asking for a costed disability payment to be introduced. That costed disability payment would address the everyday living costs — the extra, but ordinary costs of living which people with disability experience. We are asking for a payment of €40 per week to be introduced initially just for those in receipt of a means-tested payment. We are asking for that to be pushed out further in the next two budgets to those who are working or otherwise. For the disability allowance to meet the NAPS targets, we are asking for a €40 increase in this budget, for the overall payment to be increased to €182.70 over the next two budgets and for that payment to be given to all those in residential care. In regard to mainstreaming, we are asking that those payments move from the Department of Health and Children to the Department of Social and Family Affairs and for that Department to disability proof the decision making process.
