Sir, – Dan O’Brien’s article on the explosion in the number of people on disability benefit (Business, January 25th) exposed a problem of enormous social, economic and political importance.
Among the startling facts unearthed are: the number of people in Ireland receiving disability allowance, the most common disability benefit, doubled between 2001 and 2011, to exceed 100,000; Ireland now has by far the highest proportion of households in the EU in which there is no adult at work (and lest anyone jump to the conclusion that this latter number was caused by the recession, it was the second highest in Europe in 2007 at the height of the boom).
The number of people out of work today is put at about 425,000. But O’Brien’s analysis would suggest the real figure would be well over 500,000 if successive governments had not masked the true scale of unemployment by easing access to disability benefits. “By doing so,” he adds, “they have expanded and entrenched a permanently workless underclass”.
Such is the scale and corrosive impact of this problem, it is imperative that it be further researched, debated and effectively addressed. Hopefully the debate will avoid demonising those who advocate reform as “attacking the most vulnerable”.
This situation is good for no one, least of all the people who are unnecessarily categorised as disabled and who thereby risk ultimately becoming really disabled. It is not good for people who are genuinely disabled to begin with and who have to fight a continuous public battle to secure even the most basic supports to enable them to live independent, meaningful lives. It is not good for families and communities where disability benefits and other forms of social welfare have become a way of life.
The welfare and work activation policies that have created these distorted levels of dependency among otherwise able-bodied people, however well-meaning they may have been, must be reformed as an essential element of the national effort to re-build the economy and, paradoxically, to create a fairer society. – Yours, etc,