DFI Pre-Budget Submission 2023 Make or Break Disability Budget 2023
Issued on August 23 2022
Halfway through the span of this government, in the grip of an unprecedented cost of living crisis, disabled people and their families were already trying to live with chronic deficits across essential specialist services and supports for living. These pre-date Brexit and Covid. They include housing, unemployment, poverty and the cost of living with a disability, as well as chronically under resourced specialist disability services. The net result being confinement to where one lives and consequently routine exclusion from everyday community living.
The “Programme for Government – Our Shared Future” offered new hope to be free of these restrictions. Progress must be made in the year ahead. Progress that demonstrates how the 643,000 disabled people and their families will see their exclusion and poverty decrease. Ireland cannot credibly come out of the ongoing serious challenges we all face without placing the needs of these people and their families at the centre of this Budget.
This submission concentrates on four related areas:
- resourcing specialist disability services,
- solving the recruitment and retention issue,
- moving people out of poverty, and
- addressing housing and employment.
Removing the barriers set out in this submission will provide targeted support to people and families in every community in Ireland. Budget 2023 can choose to target support to those in our community who have substantial and ongoing extra needs.
This submission prioritises areas where that targeting can be most effective.
Budget 2023 can give much-needed support to those, mainly women, who provide family care and back up.