On behalf of the Social Democrats, I express our sympathies to the family of the late Brian O'Shea. He indeed was a gentleman.

The Government recognises the significant additional costs disabled people can face in their daily lives. Those are not my words. That is a line that the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Dara Calleary, has trotted out repeatedly since he was appointed last year. He said it again this morning, but they are only words and do not mean anything. They will not heat a single disabled person's home. The Minister said these empty words while announcing that the Government will tonight vote against the Social Democrats motion to introduce an emergency €400 winter payment for disabled people. This would be a modest first step to help disabled people get through winter until a proper cost-of-disability payment is introduced.

He then went on to say, "I do not want a misleading and dangerous message to go out that people must choose between food and heating." Could this Government possibly be any more out of touch with reality? This is what Joan Carthy from the Irish Wheelchair Association said in response to the Taoiseach's comments on Leaders' Questions a couple of weeks ago:

While the Government speaks of future plans, reviews and budgets yet to come, disabled people are already living with the consequences of inaction.

The emergency winter payment campaign exists because people are being forced to choose between heating and food, cancelling essential medical appointments, and sitting in cold homes because energy costs are unaffordable. This is not hypothetical. It is happening now.

Why is the Government claiming that what disabled people are saying is dangerous and misleading? Why is it not listening to what disabled people are trying to tell it about the real challenges they face in terms of heating and the cost of living?

The emergency measure we are proposing would cost €124 million. That amounts to just 1% of the €12.4 billion surplus from last year. Taoiseach, please do not pretend that the Government cannot afford this measure and please do not pretend that disabled people are asking for something they are not asking for. Disabled people cannot live on empty platitudes coming from the Government and they cannot pay energy bills with broken promises from the Government. This is a crisis that is affecting people's health and well-being. We are talking about disabled people in one of the world's wealthiest countries, struggling to get through winter, which is shameful.

I ask the Taoiseach to explain why the Government has made huge cuts to the incomes of disabled people. Why did it make such a cruel and heartless decision? Does the Taoiseach stand over the Minister's comments from earlier? Why is the Government not supporting the modest proposal for an emergency winter payment of €400?

First of all, the Government did discontinue the specific measures that we had introduced for the previous two years to deal with inflation across the board. It was not any one particular sector. The Deputy continually and disingenuously narrows it down and say we made cuts. We got rid of the one-off payments. They were not fiscally sustainable and they are not fiscally sustainable. That is the bottom line here and we need to be honest and real about it. I know those in opposition will not be because they will always come back and say we could provide another €100 million here or €500 million there. Having once-off payments is not a sustainable way to deal with these issues.

However, we did take measures in the budget to support people with disabilities, which the Deputy has ignored, because the budget is not just about payments in themselves. Across all five pillars of the strategy, supporting disabled people at every stage of life, we took measures. The cost of disability is one of those and we will deal with that comprehensively in the next budget. We delivered a record 20% increase in disability funding because supporting disabilities is about investment in services. It is about practical supports. It is about opportunities in education, opportunities in employment and opportunities in community participation. That investment in services is vital and needs to happen on a sustained basis, so we put it permanently into the budget - not once-off, but permanently into the budget for the long haul in respect of improving services in all those aspects of life for people with a disability.

We have to strengthen mainstream public support and measures for households impacted by disability on a sustainable basis. We increased the core rate of social welfare payments by €10, bringing personal rates to €254. We increased domiciliary care allowance by €20 monthly. We increased the earnings disregard for the carer's allowance to €1,000 per single person and €2,000 for a couple. The analysis by the ESRI and the Department of Finance confirms the positive impact of these decisions. It concludes that the at-risk-of-poverty rate across the population falls by 1.7%, with the largest reductions for older people, a fall of 6.2%, and for the population affected by disability, a fall of 3.8%. Those are not my figures; they come from the ESRI and the Department of Finance.

On the cost-of-disability payment, the Minister is consulting. He wants to do it properly and on a sustainable basis and he is working on that. This is a five-year Government. We committed to this and we are going to do it. We are going to do it in a proper structured way and not with a once-off measure or anything like that. It has to be done that way. This is not simple either and let us not pretend it is. This has to be done properly and that is what the Minister is going to do. He was referring to political commentary, not commentary from representative organisations. The Deputy should not deliberately misrepresent in that way.

There is no misrepresentation. Disabled people's organisations have been saying this. I quoted exactly what Joan Carthy from the Irish Wheelchair Association said in response to the Taoiseach's comments a couple of weeks ago. She said that disabled people are being forced to choose between heating and food. For the Government to label what disabled people are saying as misleading and dangerous is utterly unacceptable. I do not think the Taoiseach should be defending it. He should withdraw it and apologise for it.

The Taoiseach has not even once acknowledged that the budget has cut the incomes of disabled people by €1,400 and he has not once acknowledged the very real hardship that causes for disabled people. Will he acknowledge that and admit the Government got it wrong? We have not been calling for once-off measures; we have said we need permanent solutions. This emergency winter payment is because the Government did not bring in a permanent solution in the budget. Will the Taoiseach acknowledge the hardship the Government has caused? Will he admit it was wrong to cut the incomes of disabled people by €1,400? Will it now take action to restore the incomes of disabled people? It has the resources to do it.

We did not cut anyone's income by €1,400.

Yes, you did.

You did.

Hold on now. We brought in emergency one-off payments for two years for a whole range of sectors. The Deputy knows that well. Fine, he is in opposition and has to spin it in the way that he is spinning it.

You are in government.

What we did in the budget was to introduce record increases in investment in services for people with disabilities-----

That does not pay the bills.

They are €1,400 worse off.

------in education, in health and in areas like respite and residential where we have to substantially increase provision. The way to do that is to allocate funding on a sustainable and permanent basis. The additional needs payments are there and that is what the Minister is referring to as well.

They are there for people who are in difficulty in terms of heating and food. Those payments are there and 2,300 people availed of them last year. They are available to people who end up in difficulty for one reason or another. Our social protection programme is there to help people in those circumstances.