The Tánaiste is the Minister for Finance and the leader of Fine Gael. In the budget for 2027, there is a promised cost-of-disability payment. In budget 2025, there was a disability support grant of €400 but in budget 2026, there was no one-off payment. In fact, disabled people are €1,400 worse off as a result of the budget in 2026. Many disabled people have said they are choosing between heating and eating. One person with a spinal injury told me that since 1999, he does not remember it being this bad. When my party and I raised this and called for a modest emergency winter payment of €400 last month, we were met with derision by the Government. Disabled people were accused of being alarmist, misleading and dangerous. The Government is now forcing disabled people to take to the streets on 28 February to ask for their basic needs to be met. Will it reverse this disastrous budgetary oversight as a matter of urgency? Will the Tánaiste condemn or at least disavow the hurtful and disgraceful comments of the Minister for Social Protection?

What I will certainly do is accept the Deputy is quite rightly highlighting the issue of disability, as is his party. That is an important and good thing to do. No one wishes to engage in any sort of derisory view. These are important and legitimate issues. The next priority for the Government in terms of the work of the Minister for Social Protection is the development of a cost-of-disability payment. As it happens, coincidentally, the consultation on that payment is due to open tomorrow. I know the challenges people with a disability face. I met many of them in Galway and engaged with their lived experience only two weeks ago. They do not need to be on the streets protesting. We need them to be in the rooms engaging so we get this payment and structure right.

I will say more broadly, about any comment, when I hear of people saying they are choosing between heating and eating, I genuinely say to everyone in this House that no one should find themselves in that situation.

They do.

Our community welfare officers, and the Deputy will know this through his office, are there. He will know the names of the people.

They are there to provide exceptional needs-----

If anybody in the Deputy's constituency, or anyone in the country, is concerned about heating or eating, as he said, I genuinely encourage them to engage with our exceptional needs payments. No one should find themselves in that situation in Ireland. That is what those structures are there for. We just need to have that balance in the conversation. The cost-of-disability payment is a priority for the Government. The consultation will open tomorrow. We look forward to engaging with the Deputy and his party on it also.