Cuts in welfare payments and allowances to people who are blind or vision impaired and to carers are savage and a betrayal of the government’s commitment to pay particular attention to the needs of the vulnerable, according to Des Kenny, Chief Executive of the National Council for the Blind of Ireland (NCBI).

Disability allowance, blind pension, blind welfare allowance and carers allowance have all been cut by 4.1%, leaving many blind or vision impaired people in a financially precarious position for 2010.

According to Des Kenny, disability service providers are without a true advocate at senior civil service or Health Service Executive levels to fight for the protection and the meaningful transfer of resources to people with disabilities and to their services.

“We in the disability services sector are continually being asked to shoulder more and more of the burden of providing services from fundraised income, which has to be raised from the public, who are also suffering in so many personal ways.”

NCBI receives grant funding from the HSE under Section 39 of the Health Act 2004 and will now be subject to the same pay cuts as those in the public sector.

“The government was failed by its advisers when they did not bring to the notice of Ministers Lennihan and Hanafin that there was a potential to transfer the upcoming pay cuts from voluntary agency staff to retain the income levels of carers, people with disabilities and people who are blind or vision impaired. Cuts to the pay of voluntary agency staff could have been made more tolerable if the savings generated were transferred to maintain the incomes and the standards of care for people with disabilities. In fact it is more than likely that the savings made in the voluntary sector working with people with disabilities will be re-allocated to areas in the HSE not covered by the disability vote, concluded Kenny.