New Submission Deadline - 31st July 2024
Green Paper on Disability Reform
The Minister for Social Protection in Ireland announced proposed radical welfare ouverhaul with the publication of the Government's Green Paper in September 2023. The Disability Green Paper is available to download and view under the heading 'Documents' on the Government page via this link.
Summary of Green Paper Proposals
(see link to Easy Read further below)
There are three proposals included in this Green Paper:
1.The introduction of a new single scheme, the Personal Support Payment. This section introduces the key principles of the scheme which has three tiers. It sets out how the three tiers and the different payment rates of this new system would work.
People who are placed in tier 3 (moderate to high capacity to work) will be provided with more employment supports than people in the other two tiers. They will be required to take up training and employment offers that correspond to their capacity to work.
Payment durations will be established and linked to the anticipated duration of the person’s disability in tiers 2 and 3.
2. For people who work, a new Working Age Payment model will replace the current fragmented system of employment supports. Currently, people on a disability payment can either avail of an earnings disregard (Disability Allowance and Blind Pension), or can transfer to Partial Capacity Benefit (if they are in receipt of Invalidity Pension). This results in major differences between how mucha person can work and earn.
3. To raise the age of entry of Disability Allowance to 18 years of age and extend the payment of Domiciliary Care Allowance to 18 at the same time.
The existing Disability Allowance, Invalidity Pension and Blind Pension payments will be replaced with a new contributory and non-contributory Personal Support Payment. As with the State Pension, people will qualify for payment either based on contributory social insurance basis (funded by the social insurance fund) or on a non-contributory, means tested basis (funded by the Exchequer) Tiered approach of the Personal Support Payment Rather than assessing a person’s capacity to work on a two-option basis –that is, that a person is either fully capable or fully incapable of work –a tiered approach will be taken.
This will reflect the levels of disability and capacity so that a person who qualifies for a Personal Support Payment will be assigned to one of three broad categories based on their capacity to take up work and the level of support they need.
The level assigned could be one of the following:
Level 1: High support –Very low capacity to work The person has a high level of incapacity and low capacity to work. This means they are very unlikely to be able to take up any kind of paid employment for as long as their condition persists and for at least 2 years.
Level 2: Medium support –Low to moderate capacity to work The person is assessed as having a disability that is expected to limit their capacity to work for at least 24 months. However, they may be capable of undertaking some types of work and durations of work –for example, part-time as opposed to full-time –but are not likely to be able to fully support themselves through paid employment alone for as long as their condition persists.
Level 3: Low support –Moderate to high capacity to work The person is assessed as having a disability that is expected to persist for at least 24 months. This means that they cannot do certain types of work activity (including the type of work they were doing before acquiring their disability). However, they may still be capable of taking up other forms of employment and to do many types of work activity. This makes it a realistic option for them to progress towards sustaining themselves through paid employment alone.
The Personal Support Payment rate will then be set at three levels based on this categorisation:
• Level 1: The payment rate will be aligned with the State Pension (Contributory) rate of payment. (This rate is currently € 265.30a week.)
• Level 2: The payment rate will be set at a level between the level 3 and level1 rate.(€242.65 a week)
• Level 3: The payment rate will be aligned with the current standard payment rate for Disability Allowance. (This rate is currently €220 a week.)
Green Paper Proposals Easy Read
"Compassion for those who are suffering has been replaced by a punitive, mean-spirited, and often callous approach apparently designed to instil discipline where it is least useful, to impose a rigid order on the lives of those least capable of coping with today’s world, and elevating the goal of enforcing blind compliance over a genuine concern to improve the well-being of those at the lowest levels of society.”
ME Advocates Ireland (MEAI) Green Paper Submission
ME Advocates Ireland (MEAI) is concerned about the adequate provision of state services, resources and welfare entitlements for people with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME).
Where services, resources and welfare entitlements are unavailable, inaccessible, or under threat of being taken away, ME Advocates Ireland (MEAI) aims to highlight these inadequacies in the hope that the situation is improved in favour of the person with M.E. associated illness and disabilities.
We have responded to the recently published government Green Paper on Disability Reform with our submission by email on behalf of members of the M.E. community in Ireland.
We think that the Goverment's proposal is a reductive, regressive, brutal way to frame the lived experience and reality of life for our disabled citizens, and vehemently oppose the proposal by the Irish Government to categorize disabled people for the purposes of allocating social welfare payments. Please see our reasons as outlined in our submission.
Our completed submission is available here .
The full email details re the submission made by ME Advocates Ireland (MEAI) on 07/11/23 including the response from Government and any other updates on the matter are at the bottom of this page.
Continue below for sample submissions by us and others.
