The Economics of Inclusion / National / 🇮🇪 Ireland
IGEES spending review paper by Aoife Doyle (Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform, Ireland, September 2023) analysing Disability Allowance spending. Expenditure grew from €158m in 1996 to €2bn in 2022, mainly driven by recipient numbers (58%), which rose 55% in the decade to 2022. Only 15.5% of recipients were in work in March 2022, and the paper sees scope to raise employment.
ESRI Working Paper No. 805 (July 2025) by Elish Kelly and Bertrand Maître, funded by the National Disability Authority. Using 2020 and 2023 Labour Force Survey data, it finds disabled people were 2.7 percentage points more likely to be unemployed during the pandemic and remained more likely to be unemployed in 2023. Pre-pandemic, their employment rate was 33% vs 77% for non-disabled people.
The National Disability Authority's nineteenth annual report on Ireland's public-sector disability employment quota. With the statutory target raised from 3% to 4.5% in 2024 (6% from 2025), the share of public employees reporting a disability rose to 5.4% (15,403 people), up from 4.1% in 2023. 134 public bodies (62.6%) already met the forthcoming 6% target.
ESRI research for the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (Doorley, Kakoulidou and Simon, March 2025). Using SILC and Household Budget Survey data, it estimates the extra cost of disability at 52–59% of disposable income for households with disabled members, or €488–€555 per week. Disabled people face a double penalty of lower income and higher costs; Ireland's employment rate for disabled people is only 36%.