In advance of the last election, the Tánaiste said disability was "an absolute priority issue". He said, "We've got to look after people with disabilities". He could not have been any clearer. However, those words now ring hollow. That is not me saying that; that is the assessment of disabled people who feel forgotten, abandoned and betrayed by this Government for good reason. The Disability Federation of Ireland called the recent budget a devastating setback for disabled people that leaves them poorer, unsupported and excluded. In a €9.4 billion budget package, the Government managed to leave disabled people worse off. They have lost €1,400, an enormous sum for people who are living on the breadline. The budget was a deliberate attack on people with disabilities by a government awash with cash. Not only did the Government get rid of energy credits, it cut all the once-off payments. This included a once-off payment that for the first time recognised the additional cost of having a disability. Does the Tánaiste think that the costs associated with having a disability just disappeared overnight? Does he think those costs are temporary? It was a cruel and callous cut.

We have heard a lot from the Government about the need to target resources at those who need them most and the Social Democrats agree. Nearly 40% of disabled people live in forced deprivation, a staggering figure. They are precisely the people that resources should be targeted at. That is why in our alternative budged we included a permanent cost-of-disability payment, an increase to the disability allowance of €15 a week and a targeted energy credit of €400. Taken together our package would have meant an additional €2,200 for disabled people. That is what targeting resources looks like, not slashing payments to disabled people already living in poverty.

There is cold fury in the disability community about this Government's treatment of them. Services are threadbare, waiting lists are endless and now even the temporary cost-of-disability payment has been abolished. The Daily Mail today reported today that the Tánaiste promised to put money back in the pockets of people, yet with the stroke of pen he took €1,400 out of the pockets of disabled people at a time prices are rising. Disabled people have had enough of this Government's broken promises and duplicity. The Irish Wheelchair Association, Access for All and the Disability Federation of Ireland will hold a protest outside Leinster House on Tuesday. They want the Tánaiste to live up to his commitments, put his money where his mouth is and introduce an emergency winter payment for disabled people. Will he do this? When will he introduce a permanent cost-of-disability payment?

Disability issues and disability services are an absolute priority for this Government. That is why one of the things the Deputy will have seen published in the past number of months was the new national human rights strategy for disabled people, which is a really good piece of work. A huge amount of work was done with representative groups and with people with disabilities directly. It is a Government strategy that involves all parts of government. Because the Deputy has raised it, I will deal with it directly. He raised a very specific issue in relation to costs. It is a very valid and important issue. All aspects of how the State's policies interact with people with a disability respect their human rights and enable them to live their lives. We took a number of decisions on permanent increases in this budget. We were always very clear that we were moving away from the temporary measures that were brought in at a time inflation was extraordinarily high. We were very clear on that and we have to be clear on it because we have to make sure that we move back to a regular rhythm of an annual budget with clear parameters that works.

As part of that, the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Calleary, specifically increased the disability allowance, increased the domiciliary care allowance and made improvements to payments for carers as well. I agree with the Deputy, the Minister agrees with him and the Government as a whole agrees with him on the importance of a cost-of-disability payment. I am pleased to tell him that there was a meeting as recently as this week where groups representing people with a disability were in with the Department of Social Protection to discuss the work on designing that payment. That is something that the Minister, Deputy Calleary, is leading on, something on which he will have the support of Government as well.

We also made another change so that people who are leaving the disability allowance to move into employment are able to retain their fuel allowance, something people had sought for quite a period of time. This is the week in which the Christmas bonus is being played out. It is the last of the direct one-off cost-of-living payments to help people at this period. It is being paid out to people in receipt of disability allowance and indeed other payments too.

The budget did, though, make a very big investment in disabilities. Even organisations have accepted this in other areas. In the capital budget for disability to deliver the specialist disability infrastructure that we need across the country, the respite facilities, the residential homes, the multidisciplinary teams, we have seen a doubling of the current capital levels. We had €278 million announced in terms of disability services in the capital plan only this week. Quite rightly we also saw a very significant increase in the level of funding for disability services in the HSE with hundreds of millions of euro extra in funding provided. It was one of the largest areas of increase in the budget but I accept and Government accepts the work on the permanent cost-of-disability payment is an important piece of work. We are engaging collaboratively on that with groups, organisations and people with a disability. I know it is something that the Minister, Deputy Calleary, will be working on in the months ahead.

Does the Tánaiste not see something fundamentally wrong with producing a budget that leaves disabled people €1,400 worse off, pushing disabled people even further into poverty? It was a €9.4 billion budget package and that is what the Government produced. That is a huge problem that it needs to address now. For years, the Government has promised a cost-of-disability payment but where is it? We have had years of promises on this. There was huge disappointment in the disability community that there was no permanent cost-of-disability payment this year when the Government abolished the temporary supports.

The removal of the disability support grant is regressive and shameful. The budget "locks disabled people and their families into another cycle of exclusion". Those are not my words; they are the words of the Disability Federation of Ireland. Will the Tánaiste listen to disabled people? Will the Government introduce an emergency winter payment, which is needed now? When will it end the talk that has been going on for years about a cost-of-disability payment? When will it actually introduce it?

The Minister, Deputy Calleary, is eager to work collaboratively and is eager to engage with the Social Democrats and others on the composition of a cost-of-disability payment, what it looks like and who qualifies. He will engage with the Deputy and others on that. I have provided a status update in the sense that that work is under way with groups in the Department of Social Protection this week specifically on the issue of a cost-of-disability payment; I welcome that. I accept that it is something that has been discussed and debated in this country for a significant period. However, I would push back somewhat on the idea that the budget did not prioritise disability services because as the figures clearly show, there were a number of areas where we quite rightly took a conscious decision to significantly increase the level of funding to our disability services. We are seeing the benefits of that now in some areas, including CDNTs and the numbers of staff on them.

The Deputy asked when we would listen; we are listening. He asked when we would engage; we are engaging. We want to work in collaboration with representative groups. Indeed, we would welcome the Deputy's own input as we seek to design the payment.

There is quite an incredible display of cognitive dissonance here. The Tánaiste went to the media and told them he is going to put money back in people's pockets. He then comes in here and he is asked on behalf of disabled people who are crying out for this to put money back in their pockets via a winter emergency measure, with a one-off payment, and he just bats it away. He did not engage with it at all. These are the people that the Government made poorer, not just a little bit poorer, but a lot poorer. They are €1,400 worse off as a consequence of the budget. It cut the disability support grant, a loss of €400. It cut the living alone allowance, a cut of €200. It reduced the fuel allowance, a loss of €160. It cut the October double payment, a loss of €254. It cut the electricity credits, another loss of €250. Altogether over €1,400 has been taken from the pockets, not put into the pockets, of disabled people.

Yet, the Tánaiste still thinks he can go to the public and say, "Don't worry; we're still going to put money back in people's pockets." The excuse before the budget, from the Tánaiste's predecessor as Minister for Finance, was to say we do not need cost-of-living payments because "inflation has now returned to normal rates. We now know that was a load of nonsense. He is now in Washington where he is on over €600,000 a year. I am sure he is not bothered by the cost of groceries, but ordinary people here are left with the highest inflation in two years. They are out preparing for Christmas, and they are seeing the reality of still-soaring grocery prices with over 4% food price inflation and 3.3% energy price inflation. It is going to be a cold, hard Christmas for a lot of people. The cost of 1,000 litres of home heating oil has shot up, yet in a country with a massive budget surplus, a rich country, the Government had a budget that made everyone poorer except if they were a fast food giant, a multinational corporation or a developer. In particular, t hit the poorest and most vulnerable the hardest, the bottom 10%. As a result of the withdrawal of one-off payments they had an income decrease of 4.4%. The next 10% had a loss of 3.9% and then there was the particularly cruel approach to disabled people. The Government abandoned the promise to introduce a permanent cost-of-disability payment and then withdrew the one-off payments. They are not going to take this lying down. The Government is telling them everything is great and that it has actually improved disability services. All the organisations are screaming at the Government saying they need an emergency winter cost-of-disability payment. The Irish Wheelchair Association, the Disability Federation of Ireland and Access for All, will be together next Tuesday outside the Dáil from 12.30 p.m. to 2 p.m. Please, do not continue to be Scrooge, do not continue to be the Grinch and give this little amount back into people's pockets.

I do not remember the Deputy welcoming budgets where we brought in cost-of-living measures before the election. He is kind of opining wishing we had the budgets of the past number of years. I do not remember him ever supporting measures we brought into this House over the past several years to try and assist people at a time of extraordinarily high levels of inflation. The Deputy seeks to slag Paschal Donohoe, whose view I would take on the economy more seriously than his, for his views and call them nonsense. There is a reason the World Bank hired him. It is because he knows a few things about economics.

He was wrong though, was he not?

Surely, the Deputy would acknowledge that, while we would like to see inflation fall further, that inflation both in Ireland and in the eurozone is at a much lower level than it was when those cost-of-living packages were brought in. The inflation was off the Richter scale for a period. It may be the Deputy's position, and in fairness to him I think it is as he is quite clear about it, that he wants to have two annual budgets effectively - a budget that runs from now to Christmas and then another budget that runs next year. We cannot run the economy like that. We just cannot; it is not sustainable. We have to get back to an annual budget and that is what we said we were going to do, and that is what we have done this year.

The Deputy talked about a cold winter. I am really conscious that people look in on this from home. I want to talk to those people and for them to know there are a number of measures in place to help people with energy poverty this winter. If someone is an older person living alone, this week, he or she will, quite rightly, have received a double payment of their State pension. Older people will receive the fuel allowance, which is now up to over €1,000 a year. That fuel allowance is due to go up again in the new year. They will see the household benefit package in terms of that cost coming off their energy bill, which is worth over €400, during this period. We have reduced the VAT rate which other parties proposed allowing that go back up including some who thought the rate should go back up in April. We did not do that. We have extended that for quite number of years more. I know we have different political views, but the Deputy makes these snide comments saying all we care about is helping the multinationals. Did he see the Exchequer returns yesterday? What does he want us to do - send the jobs and the money back, somewhere else? We are very proud to be a Government that is pro-enterprise, and we are going to continue to pursue policies to keep jobs in Ireland, to keep revenue in Ireland, because that is helping to fund the country. It is helping to provide so many employment opportunities, including in the Deputy's constituency. He is getting very close to the "Ah, sure, send them all away" brigade. We need to continue to make sure we support policies in this country that attract the jobs because there are many people in the Deputy's constituency and mine that got in a car this morning and drove to work in one of those multinationals that he dismisses our support for as though it is irrelevant. He also mentioned our support for "developers". He likes to call them "developers" because that is, in his view, a dirty word. I like to call them people who build houses and people who build houses in a housing emergency. It is a serious point. Deputy Murphy can laugh and have his little ideological view of the world-----

Do you know who builds houses? Workers build houses, not developers.

-----but we need to build apartments. All of the decisions we take are to protect jobs because that is how we keep people in employment, and it is also how we run the country in terms of funding public services and we also make sure we can stimulate the building of houses and apartments in this country. These are good things to do. However, I want people with a disability to know, as I have directly said in reply to Deputy O'Callaghan, unlike Deputy Murphy's comment, that we have not abandoned anything. Work is under way on a cost-of-disability payment and as recently as this week organisations representing people with a disability did not need to stand outside the gates, they were in the Department helping engage on this very payment.

Whataboutery from the Tánaiste to avoid-----

Except when you say it. When you say it you are such a wise sage.

-----the point. Can the Tánaiste answer a yes-no question? Did his budget make almost everybody in the country poorer, "Yes" or "No"? Did his budget affect those who are poorest the worst by the budget, "Yes" or "No"? Did his budget leave disabled people substantially worse off? The answer to all of those questions is "Yes". I am interested in hearing the Tánaiste try to spin how the answer is "No". He asked what I want him to do. He has a substantial budget surplus and in that context he should not be making disabled people poorer. That was a mistake made in the budget. The Tánaiste presumably agreed to it. I am appealing to him in the days running up to Christmas to use the resources he has to reverse that decision. Do not make disabled people poorer next year. Therefore, do what they are asking of the Government and introduce an emergency, one-off winter payment. It is very simple. That is what I am asking. It is a political choice for the Tánaiste to do that or not to do that. I do not know if he is suggesting that by doing that somehow all the jobs will flee the country. Is that the type of scaremongering he is engaged in? He can make a choice not to deprive these people, many of whom are living in deprivation, and not drive them further into poverty when we are a rich country with a substantial budget surplus.

No, the point I am making is very clear. The Deputy stands up and makes snide remarks about supporting multinationals or snide remarks about supporting developers.

They are not snide.

I make the point that is about supporting jobs and building homes. That is the difference between the Deputy's ideology and ours. He is proud of that difference and I am proud of that as well. We have a different view in on this. The multinational jobs in this country are important. They help to actually fund through income and corporation taxes the running of this State and it is a bloody good thing we have them. We need to work to continue to make sure we attract investment in to this country, particularly at such a volatile time. Does the Deputy know how to make people poorer in the country? You make people poorer by continuing to go along in the hope that everything is grand and wake up one day and realise that, actually, the fiscal vulnerabilities that in the paper that I published yesterday in the Department of Finance have come to be realised.

Can we get some answers?

We are not planning on opening the budget process again because we are delivering one annual budget. Within the context of the budget we delivered, we have delivered a progressive budget. The budget documentation shows it is a progressive budget, helping those most in need over those who have the most. That is the budget we ran. That is the budgetary process and we will continue to run progressive budgets. In the context of that we have made a number of decisions to increase weekly supports to people with a disability and invest significantly in services for people with a disability. Work is under way on the development of a cost-of-disability payment and we want to work in partnership with representative groups and political parties on getting that right.