Yesterday at the launch of the summer economic statement the Taoiseach stated that the budget will support people with disabilities. If the Government is serious about that commitment, this budget has to deliver more than one-off measures. It has to address the structural issues around income inequality for disabled people, including a weekly cost-of-disability payment and an increase in core social welfare rates. In every meeting that I have with disability groups, they highlight the one-off cost-of-disability payment as something that feels insulting because they have a disability for 365 days of the year and a one-off payment just does not cut it. Vital disability supports are inaccessible for so many. This is down to the consistent failure of government after government to invest in critical services. In last year's budget, disability services received an extra allocation of a pathetic €64 million, when the Department's own capacity review said we need €1 billion in the next couple of years. That is not to mention the lack of workforce planning and the impact that is having on children's disability network teams, not one of which is fully staffed around the country. Will the Taoiseach commit to providing more than one-off measures in this year's budget for people with disabilities, including a cost-of-disability payment, and to investing in recruitment for those vital roles?

I will absolutely commit to doing more than one-off payments for people with disabilities across a range of areas. I am now chairing the Cabinet committee on disability, which met again last week. Myself and the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, and the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, have met with a number of advocacy organisations in recent weeks.

On the specifics of payments, I have to leave that for the budget but I can say, and I say it to be helpful, that I can produce data to show the Deputy that the biggest challenge we are having at the moment, particularly in relation to children's disability network teams, is not a budgetary one but a recruitment one. We actually have funded posts-----

Section 39 organisations still do not have pay parity.

I am not disputing that but I just want to make the point that we genuinely have, from memory, more than 200 vacant funded posts currently. We are working intensively with the HSE. I met the chief executive of the HSE on this last week to discuss how we can improve recruitment and retention to our CDNTs, but also how we can grow the therapy places in our colleges. I will send the Deputy a note on those actions.