Minimum Income Needs for People with a Vision Impairment MESL Working Paper

Issued: December 2017

Summary

This Working Paper examines the minimum income needs of single adults with vision impairment, applying the newly established MESL benchmark to assess the adequacy of the range of both income supports and expenditure need reduction measures available.

The recently published report ‘A MESL for a Single Adult with Vision Impairment’ built on the VPSJ’s existing Minimum Essential Standard of Living (MESL) research to identify the additional and different needs of a person with vision impairment. The research established the minimum average cost of enabling a person with vision impairment to participate in the norms of everyday life in Ireland, at a level that no one should be expected to live below.

The paper sets out to analyse the system as it currently stands, and the changes regarding ‘rehabilitative work’ which were recommended in the Making Work Pay for People with Disabilities report, with regards to identifying points of income adequacy, potential ‘welfare traps’, and establishing the Minimum Income Standard gross salary requirement of a person with a vision impairment.