Green Paper on Disability Reform Public Consultation open until 15 December

The Department of Social Protection recently launched the Green Paper on Disability Reform Public Consultation. This is the re-labelled, and long promised, ‘strawman proposal’.

It is a significant proposal, which proposes a number of potential changes to Ireland’s social protection approach to disability.

The public consultation is open until 15 December. The Department will hold between three to four in-person events, in Dublin and in two other regional locations - Cork and Athlone have been chosen with dates to be confirmed. 

DFI attended the pre-launch event on 20 September at which the proposal was announced and we will be making a submission to this proposal. We will also organise some member consultations to get feedback later this month and in November. We have strongly encouraged all our members to read up on this proposal, to make submissions, to make disabled people they work with aware of the consultation, and support them to participate in the consultation.

The Department writes that “this Green Paper is not a final reform design. It is a proposal on what the future of long-term disability payments could look like. It doesn’t claim to be the best way or the only way to change the structure of our payments.

"The Green Paper is meant to help interested parties think about what might work, and to encourage a focused debate around key design issues to reform disability payments in Ireland.

"We would like to make this public consultation process as accessible as possible and to reach a wide audience. During this consultation process you can share your views with us at one of our public consultation events, or through a written or video submission.”

You can read more and find the Green Paper here. 

If you would like to speak to us in DFI about the Green Paper please email us. 

ENDS 

Image shows loudhailer with the title of the green paper.