Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There has been a systemic culture of discrimination against disabled people in the State. We all have responsibilities and obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD, and this is the case for the Government in particular, to ensure disabled people are not discriminated against in their lives and that sufficient resources are made available to ensure this happens. As the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, is present, I will ask when disability will be moved from the Department of Health to the Department with its name in it. He is the Minister responsible. We need to see a move away from the medical model of care for disability to the social model.

The Minister of State made a number of announcements, some of which are very welcome. She did not mention the disability capacity review. This is an important document to guide how funding will be spent in the area of disabilities. This needs to happen. We ratified the UNCRPD so we need to move to implement it. This means the provision of community housing with the supports necessary for people to live independent lives.

I acknowledge the increase in personal assistant hours. These are very important. There has not been an increase in a number of years. However, it has not gone far enough. Sinn Féin would have delivered 500,000 personal assistant hours costing €12.5 million.

More needs to be done on the decongregation of institutions and the transfer of disabled people aged under 65 who are living in nursing homes. Some money has been put towards this but it is moving at an incredibly slow pace. People are still being put into institutions and nursing homes. One is cancelling out the other and it is not happening quickly enough. Many people who have been moved into the community are thriving and it is welcome that this is happening. Deadlines on this have been missed. The deadline in A Time to Move on from Congregated Settings was 2018. We are still dealing with the issue.

It is a pity that the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage is not present because co-operation the local authority and the HSE will be vital if we are going to see this happen. We need to see some sort of co-ordination between those Departments to ensure that people are not left languishing on social housing lists for years. It is not just the people in institutions who need to be moved into community housing; it is all of the disabled people who are living with aged parents in their own home and need to be moved into the community as quickly as possible.

See this speech in context