Sir, – I am one of the people living with disability in Ireland and in receipt of the weekly disability allowance. My disability is that I am totally blind. And while I am very independent, which means that I do not take taxis very often to go places, I do think that I am spending more money than others because I cannot go into a shop and select items by looking at what is on special offer; I have a cleaner come to my house every two weeks to help me with cleaning in places I may have overlooked; I need to pay a personal assistant for a couple of hours work every month to help me read my post, fill in forms, etc; and I need to use eye drops for my cornea problem which cost me €60 per month and they are not covered by the medical card.
While receiving more financial support from the Government would be desirable, what is even more important is more equality for people like myself.
For example, it is still a huge problem for people with a disability to get work, which is why many of us are unemployed and rely on the allowance as our only source of income.
Personally, I am self-employed and run my own holistic therapy practice, but I never earn enough in this job to support myself sufficiently.
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We need more inclusion, more equality, and we need to get a chance to show employers that we can work just as well as the part of the population with no disability.
In other words: just increasing the financial support for people with disabilities is not enough, society needs to be better educated and understand that we are just as good as any other member of society.
– Yours, etc,
MELANIE LEAMY,
Bray,
Co Wicklow.