As a disabled person, I consider myself lucky because I live at home and have the support of my family, which means I don’t have financial worries that come with being disabled during a cost-of-living crisis. I am a disability activist, and I am one of the many activists advocating on behalf of the disabled community; thousands of other disabled people in Ireland don’t have that support.
In the budget 2026, despite having an official report telling you that disabled people need a permanent cost of disability payment between €455 and €555 per week, you decided to get rid of the €1400 one-off payments, which were introduced in budgets 2024 and 2025.
According to Disability Federation Ireland, the official “at risk of poverty” rate is 32.5 per cent, but when you add in the cost of disability, that rate rises from 65 per cent to 76 per cent. 64 per cent of income increases in Budget 2025 were “one-off” payments that were not replaced in Budget 2026.
There are at least 1 in every 5 people who can’t work due to disability, and they live in constant poverty. To live at the same standard of households that don’t have people with disabilities, households where there are people with disabilities need between 41 per cent to 93 per cent extra disposable income. 39 per cent of people who are unable to work due to disability face enforced deprivation, and while deprivation rates decreased for the general population in 2025, they increased for people who are unable to work due to disability.
People with disabilities faced a 7 per cent rise in arrears between 2023-2024, while it didn’t rise for non-disabled people. 13.6 per cent of people couldn’t work due to their disability and struggled to keep their homes warm. The ERSI confirmed to the Disability Federation Ireland that there were sharper losses in Budget 2026 for households that had people with disabilities due to the loss of the one-off payment supports.
Some disabled people can work; however, they struggle to find employment due to many barriers put in their way. If a disabled person is a recipient of the disability allowance payment and a medical card, they can only work 18.5 hours per week and earn under 165 before it affects their disability allowance payment and medical card. To some disabled people, it wouldn’t be worth risking being without that support because they need to rely on that steady income. People with disabilities wouldn’t know when they might need to leave employment, which would result in them losing their wages.
This situation has really frustrated me because disabled people in Ireland are already forgotten about when it comes to important discussions around the future of supports and services available to them.
The Social Democrats put a bill for an emergency winter payment of €400 for disabled people to the Minister for Social Protection Dara Callery and when questioned about approving this emergency winter payment for disabled people, as disabled people are now facing the choices between heating and eating, Minister Calleary said, “I do not want a misleading and dangerous message to go out that people must choose between food and heating.”
Unfortunately, that is the reality some disabled people are facing. Some really don’t have any other choice than to pick whether they have enough money to keep warm or fed.
The government voted against this payment, and because the people of the disabled community are in desperate need of financial support, a collective of people with disabilities, disability activists, advocates and organisations, including Disability Federation Ireland, Irish Wheelchair Association and Access for All, have come together to call out the government’s wrongdoing and demand an emergency winter payment of €400. This one-off payment of €400 would really relieve some of the pressure and help 310,000 disabled people and carers to pay some of their bills and actually live, and not be in survival mode 100 per cent of the time.
There will be a protest, starting at the Garden of Remembrance, Dublin, at 1 pm on February 28, to demand this emergency winter payment and highlight the cost-of-living crisis and its disproportionate impact on disabled people. I hope people come out and stand in support of us getting this payment.
Why must the disabled community keep struggling in poverty with the rising costs in a country that is considered the third richest country globally? Does my community not matter enough to receive some of the wealth to help improve our lives, rather than push us further into poverty?
I wish you would actually do something that will benefit my community and not make it harder for them.
All my best
Emma Ward.
A disabled person and activist.
