The number of people receiving disability payments from the State has increased by almost 16,000 over the past three years, but the number of people receiving unemployment payments has dropped sharply during the same period, new Government figures have revealed.
The trend has prompted Minister for Social and Family Affairs Séamus Brennan to order his department to examine why increasing numbers of people are applying for disability allowance payments. Last year, 141,098 people received disability payments, at a cost to the Exchequer of some €1.17 billion.
This compares with 125,184 people in 2003, with the majority of the increase - some 11,500 - accounted for by extra recipients of the means-tested disability allowance. Over the same period, the numbers receiving unemployment assistance or benefit decreased from 145,338 to 128,099.
Mr Brennan said he had expected an "inevitable" increase in the numbers receiving disability payments because more people were in employment. Other factors include improvements in the means test necessary to qualify for the disability allowance scheme, and the policy of moving people from institutional care to care in the community, giving them an entitlement to disability allowance.
Officials in Mr Brennan's department are understood to be concerned that people may be choosing to apply for disability rather than unemployment payments. This is because it is sometimes seen as "easier" to get the necessary documentation for these payments rather than apply for unemployment payments.
A Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report published earlier this year found that only 154 of 1,532 people on disability benefit as a result of lower back pain who were called for medical review by the department were actually found to qualify for the benefit as a result of this pain.
The report also recommended that the department "keep under close review those GPs who certify persons as incapable for work who are later consistently found capable by the department's medical assessors".
Speaking about the PAC report last February, committee chairman Michael Noonan said there was a suspicion that some GPs were "giving out certs on demand".