I will read a note on privilege and housekeeping matters before we begin. Witnesses and members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction I might make.

Members attending remotely are reminded of the constitutional requirement that, in order to participate in public meetings, they must be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex. This is due to the constitutional requirement that, in order to participate in public meetings, members must be physically present within the confines or place where the Parliament has chosen to sit. In this regard, I ask any members participating remotely via Microsoft Teams to confirm that they are on the grounds of the Leinster House complex if they want to contribute to the meeting.

I remind all of those in attendance to make sure that their mobile phones are switched off or put on silent mode.

Today's meeting is a discussion and review of pre-budget submissions. I thank everyone for making a submission, attending today's meeting and supplying the submission details. We, as a committee, look forward to engaging with the witnesses on the submissions to address key issues, including poverty and the cost of disability.

From the European Anti-Poverty Network Ireland, EAPN, I welcome Ms Clare Daly, policy and communications officer, and Ms Becky Ryan, member. From the Rehab Group, we have online Mr. Padraig Hannafin, who is a public affairs research administrator, and we have in the committee room Mr. Adrian Stewart, who is head of employability.

I invite Ms Daly to make her opening remarks.

On behalf of the European Anti-Poverty Network, I thank the committee for listening to our request that the eradication of poverty be made a top priority for budget 2027. We think this is important, not just for many hundreds of thousands of people whose lives are impacted, but for society as a whole because poverty costs us billions of euro every year. This point is recognised by the new roadmap, which treats the reduction of poverty not as a cost, but as an investment that will yield dividends.

While it does that, it is reinforcing the target that is already in place. We have had a target of 2% of people in consistent poverty for the past two plans, yet our levels are more than double that. The first point we want to make is that, if we keep repeating the same policies, we are not going to deal with the issue. We want to see a change in strategy. We have selected five steps and are asking the committee to champion all or some of them in changing the narrative.

First, if we are to tackle poverty, we have to understand what it is. The mechanisms that are in place in Ireland do not adequately reflect that situation because we use measures such as at risk of poverty based on 60% of the median, not the average income. We talk about enforced deprivation being two out of 11 items but it is an outdated list and those in consistent poverty are a combination of the two. This does not take into account the cost of living, particularly the distorting impact of housing costs. If we take housing costs out and then look at people's income, we would have one in five people at risk of poverty rather than one in eight. Half of the people who rent in our society would be deemed to be at risk of poverty, and with people getting older and home ownership changing, this is only getting worse. You cannot eradicate poverty without dealing with housing. Perhaps we can discuss that shortly.

The second step is the idea of a minimum income. We talk about this now as the poverty level but income is only meaningful in the context of purchasing power. The problem is that social protection payments are not benchmarked. They are not linked to the cost of living. We would recommend that this be done and based on the minimum essential standard of living, MESL, standard as the most reliable benchmark.

Of course, work is a route out of poverty for many people but only with good hours, good wages and so on. We need to look at that, but we also need to look at the income thresholds of people going back to work so that nobody is worse off. We know the groups that are most likely to experience poverty. Some special initiative should be taken in that regard. Ms Ryan will deal with that point.

The UN special rapporteur for extreme poverty and human rights has recommended the need for the introduction of a universal care income to eradicate poverty. The international grassroots women's network of which I am a part - the Global Women's Strike - has been campaigning for a care income for decades. I worked with the UN team on this. At the moment, carers, especially single mothers, are in an endless double or triple day of unwaged and low-waged work, which deprives society of the time and attention caring needs. We had a successful guaranteed care income pilot scheme in San Francisco that provided ten low-income single mothers with $2,000 a month in unconditional cash payments targeted at women vulnerable to criminalisation from poverty and child welfare involvement. The introduction of a similar pilot scheme here would have a significant impact on the criminal justice system, allowing women to leave sex work, keeping children out of care and significantly reducing stress and mental health problems. A cost-benefit analysis should be carried out regarding its extension in Ireland because we know that direct cash transfers are the best ways to lift people out of poverty.

We would really like to see that point explored. It is linked to the fourth point, which is about stopping the subsidisation of the private sector. Poverty is not just about the money in your pocket, but what you have to spend it on. If public services are not there and available and people have to pay for their essential needs to be met, then they need more money and it is a vicious cycle. We spend huge amounts of money in Ireland. It is not a question of money being spent on services, but of more and more of that being paid to the private sector, which means we are getting a more expensive, poor-quality service at the end of the day. We have seen this highlighted in the recent European semester report, pinpointing our healthcare. We pay more for health than practically anybody else in Europe but many other European countries get benefits directly free at the point of entry that we have to pay for in Ireland. There is something wrong there. We can talk about it in the discussion but in every part of our society, from childcare and elder care to International Protection Accommodation Services, IPAS, centres, a lot of money is being made from public services, and those costs are spiralling. Unless we change that model of delivery of public services, housing being the biggest one, we are not going to get ourselves out of this situation. Billions of euro are spent in this way every year.

I will make my last point, as I know we are on the clock and we strictly had five minutes, which we have gone over already. A progressive tax system is needed. We welcome that the Government's new roadmap includes the idea of reducing inequality, but doing that means we need to tackle wealth inequality. We very much support the "tax wealth, not work" initiative. The figures are there, but I will not repeat them, as members know them. Eleven billionaires in this country have more income than 85% of the population. It is not taxed. We need to deal with this. We need to deal with the corporation tax situation and the loopholes. There are many sources available for this. The European Commission, hardly a radical organisation, has highlighted that Ireland needs to broaden its tax base. The money is there for that and we do not have time to delay on it.

I have worked with the Rehab Group advocacy team for 16 years and I have lived experience of disability, having acquired a spinal injury at the age of 16. People with disabilities in Ireland are more at risk of poverty and deprivation than those without disabilities. Article 28 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD, references the right of persons with disabilities to an adequate standard of living for themselves and their families, including adequate food, clothing and housing, and the continuous improvement of living conditions.

Rehab service users say that the cost of disability means choosing between heating and eating, struggling to pay for medications and struggling to pay for expensive taxis when public transport is not accessible. Many people become dependent on support from their families and become isolated from their friends. Social welfare increases of €10 do not match inflation. One Rehab employee described them as Band-Aid after Band-Aid. Rehab is calling for an initial cost-of-disability payment of €55 and a meaningful increase in core social protection rates.

The income disregard threshold on the disability allowance is a significant barrier to employment. Many people fear taking on work if it risks their disability allowance, travel pass or medical card. I know this from personal experience. I worked three days a week and received a reduced disability allowance. To supplement my income last year, I accepted an additional day of work on a six-month project within Rehab. Shortly afterwards, my disability allowance was stopped and my travel pass was revoked. When the role was extended, I declined to continue and returned to three days a week to protect my support. I am not alone. One Rehab care service user named Áine Dunne told the Oireachtas Committee on Disability Matters recently, "I would be worried I might lose some of my disability allowance, which I rely on, if I did extra work. The system keeps me trapped on a very low income." She added that living with a disability was expensive. The income disregard for carer's allowance is €1,000 compared with just €165 for the disability allowance. This disparity must be addressed to tackle disability poverty. Urgent reform of core social welfare rates, the introduction of a cost-of-disability payment and a review of employment supports are essential.

I welcome this opportunity to discuss Rehab Group's proposals contained in our pre-budget submission. Rehab Group is an independent voluntary organisation that has supported people with disabilities for over 75 years. One of its divisions, Rehab Enterprises, is one of Ireland's largest non-governmental employers of people with disabilities, employing 157 people across Dublin, Cork, Galway and Portlaoise. More than half of our workforce is made up of people with disabilities.

We welcome the commitment in the national human rights strategy for disabled people to address Ireland's poor record of disability employment. Ireland has the lowest disability employment rate in the EU and the fourth highest disability employment gap, coming in only behind Romania, Hungary and Lithuania.

My remarks this morning are focused primarily on the wage subsidy scheme. The scheme is one of the few critical supports the Government provides to employ people with disabilities. It is a demand-led scheme and aims to increase the number of people with disabilities in employment. When first introduced, the wage subsidy was 70% of the national minimum wage, but the rate declined to an all-time low of 46.6% of the minimum wage in 2025. Hence, it was hoped that a rate review in 2026 would reset the rate to reflect the increased costs employers face. However, budget 2026 introduced a new flat rate increase across three bands. What transpired was that employers with the highest numbers of employees with disabilities, that is, 23 or over, received the smallest increase of just 55 cent, while employers with one to three employees received an increase of €1.20, which undermines incentives for inclusive employment.

We have three main proposals for the wage subsidy scheme in budget 2027. First, subsidy rates should be indexed to, or reviewed annually in line with, the national minimum wage, alongside a graduated support payment structure that recognises employers providing higher levels of disability employment. This is outlined in detail in our submission. Second, the minimum eligibility threshold should be reduced from 15 to eight hours. Such a change would better align the scheme with current Irish disability employment policy, evidence-based supported employment practice, Ireland's international obligations and the realities of disability and employment. Finally, the strand 3 grant for employment assistance officers should be increased from €30,000 to €60,000 to reflect the real costs of their employment. This grant has not been increased in over 20 years. These officers play a vital role in supporting disabled employees to succeed in work.

If the commitments on employment in the national human rights strategy for disabled people are to be realised, urgent reform of the wage subsidy scheme is required.

I thank the committee for its attention to these issues.

Thank you, Mr. Hannafin and Mr. Stewart. We very much appreciate that contribution.

I will now invite members to discuss. I remind members participating remotely to use the raise hand feature and to cancel it when they have spoken. I will allow seven minutes for contributions back and forth from members to the witnesses, starting with Senator Anne Rabbitte.

I thank all the witnesses for their contributions. I am very interested in the San Francisco model Ms Ryan talked about. Could she tell us how we could consider bringing it on board here in Ireland? Has the EAPN looked at an Irish model, or is there a report or something that we could delve further into to understand this?

The idea of the care income is locally specific. We need to make our own criteria. That could be done in the cost-benefit analysis we are proposing. To start with, we recommend looking at-----

At the San Francisco model.

Yes, but the committee could look at women who have been in the criminal justice system repeatedly and who have caring responsibilities, or single mothers in a disadvantaged area. The San Francisco scheme was totally transformative. One of the women started off living in her car with her kids. They were all able to get better housing. They had little to no child welfare involvement. That is what we would expect to see here as well. To start with, women are poorer across society, so whatever group we would start with in a pilot, we would suggest that it looks at the poorest women in society. Taking women out of poverty will have a broader impact on the entire communities living in poverty because of the caring work they do. If you take women out of poverty, you can lift up a family, a neighbourhood, a whole community.

Yes. There is a lot of focus on this committee on the cost of disability, but I think the witnesses are looking at something far broader in relation to the universal care income. What is done in San Francisco is getting in first and it is the early intervention in particular areas of society, whereby you head it off at the pass before things become-----

Crucially, it also recognises the work that people are already doing. Single mothers who are struggling in poverty raising kids are doing a full-time job by doing that. This is about giving people an income that recognises that.

When poverty criminalises people, the cost to those individuals and their children is immense, but the cost to society is huge. If they end up in prison, it costs a fortune. If their kids are taken into care, it costs a fortune. We have seen the scandals, with €750,000 every year to keep them in institutions and so on. It is a matter of intervening at the core, dealing with those issues and giving people the money. Maybe you could deal with a sample group, as we have been talking about, from, say, the Dóchas Centre, of repeat offenders whom poverty drove into either addiction or being involved in drugs and so on and kids taken into care. Over a period then we would have every reason to see a huge change. If kids are allowed to stay in the family, all that intergenerational trauma is dealt with, society saves a pot load of money, the money they get in their pockets is spent locally and they do not have to go to a loan-shark or carry a bit of drugs for the few bob or whatever. It could be incredibly interesting, and I think it is well worth a try. It has been explored with young people in Wales and other areas. If the committee could champion that, it would be incredibly interesting.

Through the Chair, that is the first time I have heard such a proposal come before us here at committee. We have had different proposals and so on, but this is actually quite targeted, whereby we look at the cost of everything. I thank the witnesses for that. It is welcome.

May I jump back in? There is a willingness to spend the money, like Ms Daly said, on putting kids into care, but it was reported in Britain recently that it costs just £20 extra a week to keep a child out of care. The foster carers will get a higher payment to look after a child, but the mother will not be paid. What we are looking for is taking a different tack from investing everywhere but into the people themselves.

Absolutely. I thank Ms Ryan for that.

I still have enough time-----

Two minutes.

I have two more questions. In relation to stopping subsidising the private sector, absolutely, but there is a conversation there that needs to be had because when you talk about the HSE you talk about HSE estates and stuff like that. There are some arms of the State that run too slowly, that actually cannot step up quickly enough, and that is a huge problem. They have capital buildings and they just do not work. I am just making a comment, if the witnesses know what I am trying to say. Sometimes some elements of the State cannot step up quickly enough, unfortunately, and I use HSE estates as an example of that. I suppose Mr. Stewart would totally agree when I talk about HSE estates as to how slow they are to manoeuvre.

Does Rehab provide the Ability programme or the WorkAbility programme itself?

No, we do not provide either of those two programmes. We provide direct employment for the people. Rehab Group employs the people with disabilities, who work in the social enterprises.

Last week we had before us different groups that provide opportunities through Ability or WorkAbility. I will ask today's witnesses the same questions, if they do not mind, because I can remember them. In 2024, how many new people did Rehab take on its employment pathways programme that it provides through Rehab, even training? I am just talking about new entrants whom Rehab is putting through the training and for whom it is trying to source employment.

Probably about 1,800 in terms of training. In terms of outcomes at the end of that training, we are probably looking at about 250 jobs.

To get to the 250, did that happen within a 12-month period, an 18-month period or a two-year period?

It would vary between individuals.

Maximum?

Maximum, two years.

How much funding did Rehab get from the State to do that in that one-year period? Say we are talking about 2024. How much money does Rehab get towards the contribution to supporting people to take on the 1,800 over the period?

For a person who is full-time in the service, you are talking - and do not quote me on these figures - in and around €14,500.

Is that part of their day service, is that part of their employment or is it a mix of both?

We are being paid by the education and training boards to provide training. It is Quality and Qualifications Ireland, QQI-certified training. Part of the contract we have with it is that we would support people getting jobs.

How many employers does Rehab work with? Mr. Stewart mentioned the cities in which it was involved. How many employers, for example, IBEC, does Rehab work with? The numbers are quite large in comparison to last week's answers.

We conducted research about four years ago. We estimate that there are approximately 750 employers.

I might take up where Senator Rabbitte left off. Rehab works with 750 employers. How many of them are new, as in, how many are coming on board every year? Is it expanding or contracting? Is 750 a big figure? I am interested to know what the trend is.

It is a static figure, but within that figure, there are employers that would be coming off and employers coming on. At the end of the day, we are trying to match the person's ability to the employer, so if there is a particular employer that has a particular need, then we try to match individuals to that.

In terms of that work and the 750, has Rehab the capacity to expand that if the demand is there?

We do but quite a lot of those employers would be micro and small employers. We would expand it if the need from the people we serve required it.

The people Rehab serves are people with disabilities and that is where the demand comes from. That is interesting.

With regard to the EAPN, there are 63,000 children living in Fingal. Of those, 15,000 are categorised as living in disadvantage but there are 800 community childcare spaces. That is a tale as old as time. From what I can see, there is no capacity or desire to expand that. The council was due to produce a report in 2022 but did not. Then, when there was a call for another report, it decided it might do one. In terms of the role that accessible and affordable childcare plays in assisting people to get out of poverty, is that part of the model the witnesses referred to? How would that fit in?

The Deputy is spot on. Unfortunately, the actions following a lot of the reports have contradicted their stated objectives. The Deputy's point was important. There has been talk about moving to a system where, if a crèche is going out of business, the State takes it over and any new ones are provided publicly and so on. That has to be a model going forward. If we do not tackle that situation, then we are leaving people stranded in the home, unable to go out and take up opportunities that are there or deal with the more meaningful issues in their lives. It is very much apparent. We know that there are some measures talking about that. The Together for Public campaign for a public childcare system is something with which we are affiliated. Public childcare is essential if we are going to go forward on this.

The figures are in my head because we had a motion in the Dáil last night. I know from my own personal experience that access to affordable childcare is the difference between being able to work or go to college and being unable to do so. For many people, that is not an option. The State, the Government or whatever you want to call it is constantly telling people that work is their best way out of poverty, but not if someone is paying €800 a month for childcare. That is actually the quickest way into poverty unless the person can earn big wages.

What impact does the inclusion of accommodation costs have on the numbers of people at risk of or in poverty? The Government used the survey on income and living conditions, SILC, data, which does not include accommodation costs, but when I speak to the Minister about this, he tells me that the important thing is the trend. With regard to not including accommodation costs, specifically in households where those costs are borne by one parent, lone parents of children aged over ten years have to be the group most at risk of poverty. What does the inclusion of accommodation do to those figures?

It is a significant question. The starting point is that we cannot address poverty unless we address the scale of the cost of housing for Irish people. If we did it like that, the net result of the figures would be an at risk of poverty rate of one in five rather than what the SILC data is saying, which is one in eight. That is a significant number of extra people who, after they pay their rent or their other accommodation costs, cannot manage to survive. That is the scale of it. It has to be factored in because what someone is left with after paying that is really what they need to pay for all the other essentials to survive. SILC addresses it, in that it is there as a little offshoot, but our point is that it is so distorting that it has to be singled out and factored in as the key figure and we need to take measures to address it.

There has been a lot of scope about the undermining of the differential rent scheme. In the recent social inclusion forum hosted by the Department, a lot of the contributors made the point that they were living in State housing paying a phenomenal amount of their incomes. Their children, who traditionally would have moved out when they were over 18, are staying at home, so their rent has massively increased because their children are at home. Their children cannot save for a house, so it is a lose-lose situation. We need to look at creative ways of restoring a proper rent differential system and also dealing with the phenomenal cost of housing because if we do not, it is those people who will be affected. Almost half of the people who rent would be deemed to be at risk of poverty. That is enormous and is completely out of kilter in some ways with the rest of Europe.

It is linked to the Deputy's other point about childcare. We have become so used to paying these huge amounts of money that it seems almost normal but when we were in Brussels, some people on very big salaries, such as people who worked in the European Parliament or the institutions, were paying 50 cent for after-school care that included food and so on. Their children were brought into childcare when they were very young. It is preschool. It is all free from the state. They would be shocked to see the amount of money that people here pay. These are now essentials in Ireland and people have to have them to move on, contribute to the labour market, study and so on, so we must move to a public model. It is not revolutionary. Many normal European states have that system and get public services direct and free at the point of access that we have to pay for. That is coming out of someone's income and making them poor because then they are not left with money to buy food and heat their house.

We did not deal with climate. The UN special rapporteur has been very clear that we cannot talk about the eradication of poverty without dealing with climate change. We saw that last week. Not only will we be paying to refit houses to deal with the cold, but we will be refitting them to deal with the heat as well.

Will Mr. Stewart tell me what the most urgent budget measure needed to improve employment outcomes for people with disabilities is?

We certainly feel that an increase in the wage subsidy would entice more employers to employ more people with disabilities. Besides us, there are a number of employers, including MrPRICE and employers we spoke to around Wexford, that definitely have the capacity to increase the number of people with disabilities employed if it is recognised that there needs to be an increase in the subsidy.

How would increased investment in supported employment programmes translate into measurable job placements?

Within the supported employment model, people are supported in the workplace and there are job coaches on hand. We feel that the supported employment model would be very suitable for people with more significant and severe disabilities if it was properly resourced.

We believe the current model in Ireland is not properly resourced.

It is not properly resourced. Can I ask Mr. Stewart-----

Mr. Hannafin would like to comment. Is that all right?

Yes. I am sorry.

To add to what Mr. Stewart was saying, a vast array of things need to be introduced in the budget to encourage the employment of people with disabilities. One I have mentioned is the income disregard for the disability allowance. When we speak to our service users about going into employment, the first concern of many of them is whether they would be able to keep their benefits. They tell us that losing their benefits is a concern and a fear. They worry that they may be punished and that their allowance and bus pass may be taken off them. The income disregard for disability allowance and the secondary benefits, including the travel pass and medical card, are massive concerns for people with disabilities. Many are afraid to enter employment because of the fear of losing those supports, which they rely on completely. That must be taken into account as well.

On people looking to progress, as Ms Daly spoke about earlier, we need not only employment, but quality employment. That is very relevant when talking about people with disabilities trying to get into employment. It is one thing to get into employment but you need a quality job if you are to sustain the loss of some supports.

As I said earlier, the income disregard for disability allowance starts at €165 per week. Comparing that with the carer's allowance disregard of €1,000, the disparity is huge. Rehab completely agrees with the carer's allowance. We are just using that to highlight the disparity. That must be addressed to encourage people with disabilities to go into employment. The disregard also disincentivises the emotional and social development of people with disabilities. Moving in with a partner, a boyfriend or girlfriend, can quickly result in the loss of a person's disability allowance and secondary supports, making the person with a disability completely dependent on the partner he or she has just moved in with. Reform of that would not only be beneficial in addressing poverty and encouraging disabled people to go into employment, but it would also align with Ireland's commitments under the UNCRPD, which is also hugely important. On the income disregard and moving in with a partner, if you move in with somebody, the disregard for that partner is €60 per week. With the carer's allowance, the partner has a disregard of €1,000. A couple seeking carer's allowance effectively has a disregard of €2,000 whereas if one member of a partnership is seeking disability allowance, that couple's disregard is approximately €220.

Only last week, and on two previous occasions, we discussed people taking up part-time employment or some other form of employment and their disability allowance then being reduced. I think everybody here is opposed to that. We need to get the people who can enact legislation to impose a change in here.

What barriers under current activation schemes most prevent people with a disability from progressing into work? What specific changes in the budget would remove them?

One of the key measures relates to the wage subsidy scheme. There is a minimum number of hours, 15. That floor precludes quite a lot of people with disabilities from availing of employment. We do not see any reason it should be different. The Government has the work and access programme and the EmployAbility service, both of which regard eight hours a week as employment. We do not see any reason the wage subsidy scheme should be set at 15 hours.

There also needs to be a lot of focus on employer awareness and employer engagement. As I have said, we work with 750 employers. There is a lot involved in that. A lot of employers want to do what is best but they want to dip their toe in the water first and see how it works for them. We find that, once they do that, it is okay. It is about employer engagement as well.

Can Mr. Stewart quantify the funding gap in existing employment services and outline the minimum additional allocations required to maintain service levels?

A lot of those details are contained in our pre-budget submission.

That is grand. I have one last question. What reforms to the wage subsidy scheme or the EmployAbility programme would have the greatest impact if included in budget 2027?

A reduction in the hours would certainly have a great impact. The subsidy should also be increased. To give the Deputy an idea of the subsidy, the value of the subsidy has reduced as it compares to the national minimum wage. Since 2022, there has been a 30% increase in the national minimum wage while the wage subsidy scheme payment has increased by 5.8%. This essentially means the cost to employers of employing people with disabilities has increased. The subsidy itself needs to increase. It needs to be reviewed annually in line with the national minimum wage.

We are out of time.

Will we be having another round?

Yes. Mr. Hannafin wants to make one final comment.

To add to what Mr. Stewart was saying about employer awareness, this is something a lot of service users bring up. There is a lack of understanding of disability, which they feel precludes them from entering employment. They tell us that they need a chance, that employers do not look at you if you have a disability, and that you have to hide your disability. In our pre-budget submission, we are asking that funding be made available for employee disability awareness training and for a public media awareness campaign to be established to make employers more aware of the supports that are available and the benefits of employing a person with a disability. Some may have focused only on the stigma of employing a person with a disability or may have had fears. Rehab employees have told us that, even when they are trying to get their service users into work experience, the most successful route is normally through employers whose managers already have an awareness of disability through lived experience. They may have a disability themselves or one of their family members may have one so they are more aware of people with disabilities. That is where the majority of the success has been coming from. If we can expand awareness among other employers, that would be hugely beneficial.

I thank all the witnesses for coming in. I really appreciate them being here and making their contributions. I will start with the eradication of poverty. I cannot agree more. That has to be the goal not just for any government, but for the Oireachtas as well. I will pick up on a few comments that have been made. The cohorts in extreme deprivation or extreme poverty include lone parents, older people living alone, carers, people with disabilities, and people in certain disadvantaged communities and, importantly, their children.

There is a targeted approach. I thank Ms Ryan for the suggestion of looking at the pilot programme in San Francisco and at replicating that model. It is a worthwhile idea, and a pilot we should take forward. Notwithstanding that, in order for people to be taken out of poverty, they have to be given money. We cannot get away from that. One of the best parts of the discussion so far has been in respect of the question of structural problems, including the cost of housing and childcare and the privatisation of services. I reply to a previous speaker, I have to say that if we do not back the public sector and manage it properly, we will be reliant on the private sector to fill the gap. That has been the way it has been for the past 20 or 30 years. I take issue with the assertion that private services should play a role. If we move to a public model and back it and structure it properly, it will bring down costs, particularly for those living in poverty.

On the idea of universal care income, I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations. The cost was $2,000 per month in San Francisco. That is $24,000 per year, which is approximately €21,000. The annual rate of carer's allowance in Ireland is approximately €14,000, so it would be approximately a 50% increase in annual payments to carers, which most carers would agree is needed or warranted and that it would cover many of their costs. The idea of focusing on some of poorest in society by means of a pilot programme would be worth considering.

With universal basic income, the question that sometimes arises relates to which additional payments will be required. In the Irish context, some people receive fuel allowance and others get the housing assistance payment, etc. There are other payments. In the context of the pilot in San Francisco, what other things did people get, or was it just that? What other supports were necessary to help people in that instance?

I will start on the more strategic points. The Deputy is right, and that is what we tried to do in our submission. Detailed points were made in the document we sent in from the Social Inclusion Forum. Immediate measures could alleviate the situation a little for groups, but we wanted to stand back and look at the idea of the elimination of poverty, particularly during the Irish EU Presidency and because Europe has launched its strategy and we have launched our new roadmap. We welcome that the committee has been given an enhanced role in that process. The Minister will report to it on the poverty strategy.

We would like to see some initiatives being taken. We like the idea of support for a universal care income because the picture is larger. As has been stated, a huge amount of money is being spent. It is not a question of money/ The money generally goes to private operators but the quality can often be extremely problematic. That has been the subject of many a "Prime Time" report. It is a worrying model. We need to get off that page and address the matter. The care income is part of that. It would be separate from everything else people get. It is a little like the arrangement the Government has with Tusla whereby children over the age of 18 who are in care get an automatic payment, regardless of whether they are in receipt of the SUSI grant, are on the dole or have a job. It does not matter. It gives them the freedom to make choices about their lives.

Given the state of the housing crisis and the cost of rent, top-ups might be needed for housing support. The travel pass makes a huge difference to people's ability to live a full life. People who want to are also not prevented from getting other work alongside it. The $2,000 per month is just the basic income.

That is helpful. I thank Ms Daly and Ms Ryan.

Turning to Rehab and the question of disregards and the loss of benefits, we have heard about that quite often. I hear about this from constituents all the time. It is a major issue. I will turn to the wage subsidy scheme, because it is one of the best programmes it is possible to do to alleviate poverty for people with disabilities. I will frame this. The history of social protection in Ireland has been about getting people to survive as opposed to thrive. The wage subsidy scheme is about giving people paths to inclusion in society. Revisiting the minimum wage, what would the wage subsidy scheme need to look like if we were to get back to the 70% of the minimum wage it started with. What kind of effect would that have on providing paths to inclusion in employment for people with disabilities. I would love to hear from Rehab about that.

I thank the Deputy for the question. The wage subsidy scheme was restructured in budget 2026 to three tiers. We looked at the top tier. What we looked for in our submission was a subsidy of €12 per hour, which equates to 80% of the minimum wage. That would be scaled back according to the number of people particular employers employ.

On the impact, one of the things we looked at closely was that the number of employers availing of the wage subsidy scheme has decreased since 2019, as has the number of people with disabilities on the scheme. That is concerning in light of the role the scheme can play in increasing the number of people with disabilities in employment and the number of employers involved. Many employers we work with, the smaller employers, are not necessarily doing it for the wage subsidy scheme, and quite a few people with disabilities who are employed are not on the subsidy. Whatever way we say it, some people with disabilities require additional supports and quite a lot of additional time and training. That is a cost to employers, and they need the subsidy to cover those costs.

Importantly, the wage subsidy scheme is termed a subsidy for the employer, but the better way for us to think about it is as a co-funding model of inclusion for people with disabilities. The employer gets something out of it and the State gets a huge amount out of it as a pathway for people to get out of poverty and be included in society. Part of the problem is that the mentality has been that it is an employer subsidy. In other words, that we are throwing money at employers. That is not how we should frame it or think about it, however.

Rehab does great work. I thank it for all the work it does in this space because it is valuable to people.

One of the things we look at in the context of employment and the wage subsidy scheme is that, quite often, the alternative is to provide a day service place, which would cost a lot more money than any wage subsidy. It is penny-wise and pound-foolish to a large extent.

The witnesses are most welcome. I am glad that we are having this conversation. Last week, we had relentless positive engagement on the very issues that have come up today in the context of WorkAbility and giving people with disabilities greater access and better supports. Mr. Hannafin articulated the comparison that needs to be drawn between people on carer's allowance and those on a disability benefit very well. I am a great admirer of the WorkAbility programme. I am excited about how it has progressed and how people have engaged with it and personally benefited from a holistic point of view. It is phenomenal that we have that scheme. As I said last week, it is a no-brainer to embrace it and to develop it further. If that means funding for businesspeople who want to offer a person with a disability an opportunity to work for their business, then it should be supported. Mr. Hannafin mentioned the fear of a cliff edge regarding payments and the fear of losing a benefit if people take on an additional day.

It is criminal that someone who wants to advance and progress in life and take on that extra day or two, has this sledgehammer come down and put paid to that. It behoves us as a committee to continue this debate about how we can support the pre-budget submission under the six headings. It is powerful and that is the direction we need to go. I apologise at this point for not being present to the hear the statements. I was in the health committee, which is of significant interest to me as well. One thing I am mindful of is the seismic shift from ten years ago to now in terms of the witnesses' asks. You look at the cost of living today from the availability of housing and its cost if you have a chance of getting a mortgage. There are transportation and health costs. The model we had is now archaic but was probably okay at that time. That model needs to shift to modern-day thinking and living and be adapted to suit what Mr. Stewart and Mr. Hannafin are trying to do. We need to continue having this conversation. It makes great economic sense for Government and society to be able to do what I am asking for and what they are asking for, which is to have people like them employed rather than sitting and waiting at home for a payment. That is the model we need to champion. It is about getting people opportunities. There are people who are willing and generous in what it is they want to do by means of offering somebody with a disability an opportunity in life. There are so many brilliant people who have a disability and who would do transformative things for businesses if they had that opportunity. If that leads to a payment loss, that really needs to be investigated further.

I do not really have any questions. I absolutely admire what they are doing, and we need to be fully supportive of that. The end result will be that people wanting to work will be better off emotionally, physically and mentally. They would have so much more to offer than the worry of losing a benefit or not bothering because of all the stuff that goes with the disappointment of being told their payment is not going to continue because of the cliff edge. It is really more of a comment than anything else, but I want to say that. I do not have any direct knowledge of supporting someone with a physical disability, but I tell the witnesses that I have woeful empathy and interest in supporting people who need to do that because, by God, we would certainly be missing out on someone spectacular if we do not do that.

On my own behalf I thank Mr. Hannafin, Mr. Stewart, Ms Daly and Ms Ryan for their presentations. My first question is for Mr. Stewart. It is about the wage subsidy scheme. He has made three good points about how it can be achieved and of reducing the 15 hours. Is there a priority on those three points, or would he like all of them to be implemented in succession?

I do not think there will be a huge cost to the resumption of eight hours from 15 hours. From our perspective and that of Rehab Enterprises, we have already experienced redundancies because of the wage subsidy. We had 57 redundancies in 2021 and 2022 and a further 11 in 2023. To give an idea, we maintain that for ourselves alone, the cost of not keeping the wage subsidy in line with the national minimum wage is well over half a million euro over the past four years. That is a huge cost that we take on in our businesses, which are low margin to begin with. That is the nature of the business we are in. The wage subsidy is the only subsidy we get from the State. We do not get any other subsidy. We employ the people. We work in the commercial area and deal with commercial contracts. It is not sheltered work. It is commercial employment. We think the reduction in hours for the wage subsidy is important. It needs to be reviewed. The grant given towards the people who support people in employment is €30,000 for 20 years. It needs to be reviewed.

On that point, Rehab is probably one of the largest employers of people with disabilities. It is over the threshold of 23 employees and it gets the flat increase to that. How is that affecting Rehab as opposed to others that may have fewer than 23 eligible employees?

The costs of it are huge. We are continuously having to look at each of our sites and operations. A number of our operations are definitely on the borderline in terms of whether we continue to have them. It has a serious impact. I will also say, from talking to other employers employing larger numbers of people with disabilities, that they feel there is a lack of recognition of the amount of work they have to do and to put in to employ people with disabilities. It is that lack of recognition as well.

I turn to Mr. Hannafin. Both I as Chair and the committee members have had a lot of discussion in the past number of weeks about the cost of disability and trying to get more people with disabilities back into the workforce and trying to get people in receipt of jobseeker's payments back into the workforce, and on the WorkAbility programmes. It has been a huge learning curve for the committee in respect of how all those different schemes and supports work throughout it. One thing that has consistently come up, as Mr. Hannafin mentioned in his presentation, is the fear of people in receipt of some social welfare supports about rejoining the workforce in whatever capacity, be it through disability allowance or the WorkAbility programmes. They have that real fear of losing the additional supports like the free travel pass, the medical card and so forth. His points are well made. His reference is not in any way against carers, but his point about disregards to carers compared with people on disability allowance is a good one that has been made. Today is 1 July and we have increased the thresholds and income disregards significantly for people to qualify for the carer's allowance. It has increased from €625 to €1,000 for a single person, and from €1,250 to €2,000 for a couple. Mr. Hannafin tells me it is €165 for a person on disability allowance and then they are cut off. It was €60 for a couple. I thank him for outlining those points to us. It is something this committee has to seriously take on board for our report to the Minister as part of the pre-budget submissions we had today. Deputy Aird has a supplementary question.

I did not get an opportunity to ask Ms Ryan or Ms Daly a question yet. Before I do that, I want to highlight something to Mr. Stewart and Mr. Hannafin. This is something I am dealing with, and which I only received on Friday. This person received a letter saying that following a review of their disability allowance it was found that there has been an increase. Because this person got a small amount of work, she was on €146.50 and it now has been cut back to €113.55, which meant €32.95 was taken out of her disability payment of €146.

That is factual. A letter came detailing this. This is not just me saying something or looking for publicity or anything. It is factual about a person with whom I am dealing. How low can we stoop in anything in order for that to be happening? This is real and happening before our eyes. We are legislators. A point was made about the carers, who are fantastic and brilliant, but this is the other side of it. I wanted to make that point. I presume that everyone here – there are four of us – agrees with me that persons with disabilities have extra costs. That is not taken into account at all.

We have come in here this morning and the witnesses have come in to talk to us. This is a true, real example. This person, who was in receipt of a disability payment of €146.50, received this letter on Friday to inform her of this reduction. This goes back to the whole issue we spoke about last week; the discouragement to take up a little job. There is complete discouragement in that regard. That must be addressed immediately. I just wanted to say that and there it is in black and white for everyone.

What is the most effective anti-poverty intervention the Government could fund in budget 2027 to reduce deprivation rates quickly? These are quick-fire questions.

The Deputy left the easy question until last. There is no one single measure. There are loads of measures outlined in the report of the social inclusion forum-----

There is not just one.

-----but we need to look at it on an overall basis. The shortest measure would be to include housing costs in the calculation of poverty because then we would get an accurate picture on where people are at. There are other measures about income disregards and all of that, but it is about changing the narrative. The UN special rapporteur on poverty and human rights has said that we have got to get away from this model. He calls it going beyond growth and focusing on outcomes. We need to look at what makes the difference on the ground. It is not just that a rising boat lifts all ships. We must unlock those log-jams.

How would increasing the core social welfare rates by the witnesses’ recommended amount affect the at risk of poverty rate?

Essentially, we are looking for the minimum essential standard of living, MESL, which we believe is the best standard-----

That is grand.

-----to be linked and benchmarked. The State has responded by one-off payments to the crisis but as Deputy Roche said, the cost of living, which is being discussed in the Chamber at the moment, overshadows everything. We must link them. We cannot just abstractly deal with income. It must be linked to purchasing power and it should be benchmarked automatically.

Ms Daly previously touched on my next question, but I would like her to reiterate it. What groups are currently most exposed to deep poverty? What targeted budget measure would provide immediate relief?

There has been a lot of focus on disabled people breaking over the income disregard factor. It is the same for lone parents. Years ago, people were able to work a lot longer and keep their benefits, but now they cannot. They used to be able to keep their benefits, take up a community employment, CE, scheme and not lose anything. We kind of have to go back to the future on some of those things. A lot of the old cuts have to be lifted.

I have only two more quick questions. What structural changes to the tax and welfare system are essential to prevent poverty rather than simply alleviate it?

We need to start taxing wealth. We need to introduce that. The European Semester recently said that we have to broaden our tax base. There is no point in doing so and targeting the phenomenal wealth income, however, if we do not ring-fence and invest the proceeds into the types of initiatives that have been highlighted today, as well as the other budgetary measures that committee members will be looking for, which cost money but ultimately also save money. I would like to see a wealth tax. Reducing inequality is an objective of the new roadmap.

Will Ms Daly identify one area where current Government spending is not sufficiently aligned with anti-poverty outcomes and explain the required adjustment?

There is no one area. The new roadmap talks about inclusion and lifting people out of poverty and so on, but we know the difficulty the migrant population, for example, faces. On the one hand, we are saying we want to include people, there is a need for new workers and so on as a result of an ageing population, and there is division in our society. On the other hand, we are making it harder for migrants to work by changing the resettlement policies and not allowing their families to reunify with them, unless they get way more money than we would expect an ordinary worker to live on in Ireland. That type of joined-up thinking is the point. The Deputy talks so fast he is making me talk fast in panic in reply.

Ms Daly also talks very fast. Will Mr. Hannafin comment on what I read out about the lady who is down €32.95 out of her payment of €146.50? I want to raise this matter in the Dáil and I would like to be able to comment on what Mr. Hannafin said in this regard.

That is a common experience our service users often bring forward in our focus groups. It is not an isolated experience. When a person loses their disability allowance completely, they will immediately receive a letter informing them that their free travel pass has also been revoked. That is something people depend completely on. Accessible transport is not always available but when it is, people completely depend on it to get to education, training or employment.

I will pick up on the Deputy’s question to Ms Daly about the measures that could be taken in order to tackle poverty. It is important to highlight that Ireland ranks twentieth in the EU for disability poverty. An ESRI study in 2025 showed that disabled people are economically disadvantaged, with additional weekly costs of disability ranging from €488 to €555. From a rehab point of view, a cost-of-disability payment would go a long way. I know there is a lot of work being done on that at the minute and there is still a lot of work to do. While we recognise it is a hugely complex issue, we are asking for an initial, universal cost-of-disability payment of €55 that would be available to all people with disabilities, including those in employment and those over the common age limit of 65. That would go a long way to tackling disability poverty.

I apologise for having to leave. As it happens, I had to go to discuss poverty, albeit in another forum. My question is for Mr. Hannafin. It relates to the cliff edge experienced by people with disabilities. What is the impact of that? What do those individuals lose by going to work? I know it is hard to put a monetary value on a medical card because it entirely depends on how often a person goes to the doctor and all of that. When it comes to that cliff edge for people with disabilities contemplating taking up employment - let us say the barrier of finding such employment is out of the way - what is it that they stand to lose and how can that be best replicated? Is it best replicated with money or schemes? For example, if a person loses their free travel pass, is it replacement money to get a taxi or do they just need to keep the travel pass? How would that work?

The Deputy mentioned taxis but the free travel pass does not cover taxis. Accessible transport is not always available either. Despite having a free travel pass, people incur a cost-of-disability payment quite often with regard to having to take taxis to and from education or employment because the public transport is not available or accessible, or the infrastructure around the transport is sometimes not accessible. For example, a person may get to the bus stop and find it is not accessible so they cannot get on the bus.

As I said, for people with disabilities who lose the disability allowance, not only do they face the cliff edge of losing that support but they also lose the free travel pass.

While the costs involved in losing both the free travel pass and the medical card are completely on an individual basis, they are huge, given that people with disabilities experience extra costs from having to attend medical appointments or in seeking assistive technology such as a wheelchair or supports such as a nurse to come out in the morning, which a medical card sometimes covers. The cost of purchasing a wheelchair out of your own pocket would be in the thousands, ranging from €5,000 to €20,000. Those are huge costs and would not be sustainable. The person with the disability would have to give up their employment, seek to go back on disability allowance and try to receive a medical card again. That is a massive fear. People also have a fear about how long it would take to get back onto the disability allowance if they left employment and what they would do in the interim.

That is an interesting point and one that can be lost sometimes. The medical card is not just about access to the doctor but also about access to those devices, some of which even a person with a massive income would not be able to afford. There is a bit of disconnect there when the Government says it wants people with disabilities to be in work. It eulogises the value of work, etc., but there are also barriers put in the way. Someone living out in north County Dublin who wants to take a train has to give 24 hours' notice. We still do not have level-access trains, so there is absolutely no chance of being spontaneous and picking up an extra shift in work if one is offered at short notice. If people cannot ring the train 24 hours in advance, the person with a disability has to take a taxi, which, for most people, means they might as well not bother going to work. Then, if they repeatedly turn down shifts when they are offered, they will not get offered them again. If I am called three times and each time I say, "Sorry, I need 24 hours' notice", the next time a shift becomes available, I will not get a phone call. There are so many losses and while it is very hard to quantify, that cliff edge, as Mr. Hannafin described it, is one that we as a committee need to be very cognisant of.

Do Ms Ryan and Ms Daly have any final comments to make?

I thank the committee. We really welcome its enhanced role in the roadmap process for the eradication of poverty. We know what the answers are, namely, income adequacy, access to public services and a targeted approach to the most vulnerable groups. We know that but we would especially like the committee to consider the idea of a universal care income, started as a pilot with those either involved in the criminal justice system or those who are at risk, and their families. It would be incredibly interesting to look at the outcome of that. I thank the committee for hosting us.

Chairman-----

We will bring in Mr. Stewart first.

I thank the committee for hearing us out this morning. I would like to leave members with a thought. We have nearly full employment in Ireland at the moment, yet, as I said in my opening statement, we have one of the worst unemployment records for people with disabilities. There is something not right and we need to fix it. I am encouraged by what I heard this morning from the committee that something will be done about it.

I am not going to hold the witnesses up but they can be absolutely sure that I will work with my colleagues and try to ensure we achieve their demands. Second, and maybe just as important, when I saw the name "Clare Daly" I said I had better get down to the meeting, even though I am late. I wanted to contribute because I did not want to suffer the wrath of Clare Daly.

I am very glad of that because the first thing I noticed when I came into the room was the Deputy's disgraceful absence. It is absolutely lovely to see him.

I did not want to suffer. I did before when I was in the Chair but on a serious note-----

The Deputy only got into that Chair because of a couple of votes and he knows well where they came from. We have no secrets.

We will leave the final comment to our online contributor, Mr. Hannafin.

I echo what was said and thank the committee for having us and listening to us describe the situation. It is important that we get our service users' voices into these situations because they are the most important ones. They are the ones with the lived experience who can tell us what exactly is going on out there.

If the committee is looking for quick wins, one quick win would be to cut the hours required under the wage subsidy scheme from 15 to eight. As Mr. Stewart said, that would be a low-cost initiative that would make a big difference. Another quick win would be to address the disregard for the disability allowance.

I thank Mr. Hannafin, Ms Daly, Ms Ryan and Mr. Stewart for their contributions and for providing the briefing materials in advance to assist the committee in its deliberations.