Rose Conway-Walsh: Expand Wage Subsidy to Disabled Entrepreneurs
Rose Conway-Walsh challenged the Taoiseach over exclusions in the wage subsidy scheme and asked that disabled entrepreneurs be included. The exchange took place during a parliamentary session addressing Budget 2026 measures and the ongoing gap in employment supports for people with disabilities.
Rose Conway-Walsh asked why the wage subsidy scheme financially supports employers who hire people with disabilities but excludes disabled people who want to employ themselves. She pressed the Taoiseach to examine expanding the scheme to cover disabled entrepreneurs.
The Taoiseach outlined Budget 2026 measures including investment in special education, grants to adapt homes, a modest increase in the disability allowance and an expansion of the wage subsidy scheme. He said he will speak to the minister about disabled entrepreneurs and acknowledged room for more radical improvements.
The deputy highlighted Ireland's low disability employment rate, between 32 and 33 percent, and argued that current policy creates a perverse situation: supports for employers, but not for disabled people to set up their own enterprises. The Taoiseach acknowledged barriers such as the interaction between income and disability payments as areas needing reform.
Both the deputy and the Taoiseach indicated this is an area for further work ahead of future budgets, with the Taoiseach saying he does not see a reason for disabled entrepreneurs to be excluded and that workplace participation for people with disabilities must improve.
Main exchange
Rose Conway-Walsh asked why the wage subsidy scheme financially supports employers who hire people with disabilities but excludes disabled people who want to employ themselves. She pressed the Taoiseach to examine expanding the scheme to cover disabled entrepreneurs.
Government response
The Taoiseach outlined Budget 2026 measures including investment in special education, grants to adapt homes, a modest increase in the disability allowance and an expansion of the wage subsidy scheme. He said he will speak to the minister about disabled entrepreneurs and acknowledged room for more radical improvements.
Context and consequences
The deputy highlighted Ireland's low disability employment rate, between 32 and 33 percent, and argued that current policy creates a perverse situation: supports for employers, but not for disabled people to set up their own enterprises. The Taoiseach acknowledged barriers such as the interaction between income and disability payments as areas needing reform.
Next steps
Both the deputy and the Taoiseach indicated this is an area for further work ahead of future budgets, with the Taoiseach saying he does not see a reason for disabled entrepreneurs to be excluded and that workplace participation for people with disabilities must improve.
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Transcript
Budget 2026 unforgivably made some people in receipt of disability payments up to €1,400 or worse off. But people with disabilities want to contribute to society and they want a job in their communities and they have the same ambitions in life as everybody else. Ireland has one of the lowest disability employment rates in the EU, between 32 and 33 percent. That's nearly 20 percentage points below the EU average. Now the wage subsidy scheme financially supports employers who employ people with disabilities and has facilitated the participation of many disabled people in the workforce. However disabled entrepreneurs are excluded. So we have a situation where employers are financially supported to hire disabled people but disabled people are not supported to employ themselves. My question Taoiseach is, as your government has said that it will prioritise disability, will you examine how the wage subsidy scheme can be expanded to include disabled entrepreneurs? Thank you, Deputy Rose Conroy-Walsh. First of all I'd say the budget did allocate £3 billion investment in special education alone. There was £130 million for grants to adapt to homes of older people and disabled people. There's a €10 increase in the disability allowance, the expansion of the wage subsidy scheme. There was a €375 increase to the income limit for carers benefit and then we increased the domiciliary care allowance, the monthly allowance by €20. So there's a lot of long-term permanent positive measures for disability. You are correct in raising the wage subsidy issue. I have spoken to Minister Cleary on this and improvements were made last year but I think we are open to more radical improvements and in particular I will speak to the Minister in terms of disabled entrepreneurs. I don't see any reason why they should be excluded from the wage subsidy scheme. Also we need to look at the facility and capacity of people with disabilities to participate in the workforce without losing their disability allowance immediately and so on like that. There's lots of issues around that. There's limits to how much their income rises and I think we need to be a bit more radical in that respect and that those are areas of focus in the next budget around workplace participation when people with disabilities are not being given enough opportunities to enter into the workplace and we have a poor record as a society and as a country in that respect. We have to do far better and the public service has made a lot of progress but needs to make more progress in facilitating employment and then where you have various schemes of employment, I think of deaf enterprises in my own area for example, no we've made good progress with the HSE there but for a long time there was no clear structure to support a highly qualified craft work in terms of upholstery and repair of furniture which is a great circular economy solution to the wider community that benefit and they were very skilled people but the financial sustainability and underpinning of it was not what it should be so every now and again they'd come looking for a bailout or looking for some supports and we've improved upon that and those are the areas as many other kinds of enterprises of that kind that we can we will do better on.