Disability allowance in Ireland

runningthroughthe6

I’m going to try make this as readable as possible, I just struggle with writing. I’ve been on disability payment for about 10 months now. Haven’t been able to work for about 4 years. I’ve tried and I’ve wished every day I wake up that I can go to work but I’m just not able to. I either get fired or I quit. I’m diagnosed with psychosis and it’s reoccurring from my first psychotic break in the end of 2019. I get positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia although the consultant who put me in hospital has retired so I’m not actually diagnosed with schizophrenia as far as I know. I see patterns and hear whispers a lot, I’m extremely paranoid whenever I leave the house so I don’t usually leave the house. I have severe depression, insomnia and a lot of other symptoms of schizophrenia. I’ve had hallucinations of flags, black shadows, I think I see people sitting in cars when there is no one in the car, I can’t tell the difference sometimes between real memories and false memories, I don’t suffer too much from delusions but I’ve had them.

I wake up every day and wish I wasn’t like this and that I could be my old self and go back to work in retail like I did for 2 years. It hasn’t happened though. I’m still living in my parents house which causes me a lot of discomfort because a lot of my issues stem from living here and I’m reminded of how I was when I was severely psychotic. The reason I’m posting this today is to bring light to the issue that people who are on disability allowance face in Ireland. I’m assuming there’s a lot of people with the same issue as me because I don’t know how else they would afford to have their own house.

the maximum payment for disability allowance in Ireland is €203 a week (apparently it’s going up to €208 in January). The maximum payment for rent supplement in Ireland is €660 a month in Dublin. This means that no matter how much you suffer in life you won’t be able to get a key to your own apartment or house unless you wait the many years it takes to get a house on the housing list. I applied for both the disability allowance and the housing list at the same time but was denied the housing list application. I was told yesterday that if you are disabled in Ireland you are entitled to be on the housing list but I don’t know if it’s true because I don’t have much contact with other people outside of the internet and my mental health team. I can’t find much about this on Reddit although there is a great thread made recently that highlights the issues with housing for disabled people. I can’t link it but if you search ‘disability’ on r/Ireland, there’s a post titled ‘the reality of living on social welfare in Ireland’ made only 40 days ago.

So for years now I’ve thought about what I have to do to fix my housing issue. I just want to be able to do the menial tasks like washing clothes, buying my own food, being able to feel peaceful and put on a good tv show and relax on a weekend. I’m not looking to have parties where people wreck the place, I just want a piece of comfort. But I can’t get it. So a lot has gone through my head, save this 203 a week for however many months and then emigrate to another country and take a chance, go to another country in the UK or the EU (that might not even be predominantly English speaking) and try to claim benefits while I use the money I’ve saved for an apartment. I’m so stressed out on how that would go that I can’t even describe it.

it just seems like I’ve no options at all. I just want to get myself into a nice flat or home until I can get my head straight and then go back to work. I can’t see myself working from where I live now because of the past memories that are haunting me yet there’s no help at all. To make it worse you can’t even claim Disability allowance abroad. So if I do end up risking it and moving to the UK to get a flat, if it doesn’t work out and I come back, I might not even be able to get disability allowance again and I won’t even get paid while there. All the money would be going towards would be a roof over my head.

I just don’t get it. It hurts me to think that my life might never progress because I can’t get somewhere to live while being disabled.

Spear

Try asking in a forum that's related to the topic instead, such as the state benefits forum:

https://www.boards.ie/categories/state-benefits