John Dolan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

This is my first opportunity to participate in this committee, and I welcome the fact that the committee has taken an interest in this. The circumstances of today are the circumstances of today. The Disability Federation of Ireland and several other disability groups are witnesses before the Committee for Transport, Tourism and Sport next door. Some of these issues have effects from Dingle to Brussels. Perhaps it will be possible to come back to this issue in the new year.

I should say at the outset that I was in a position last week, as chief executive of the Disability Federation of Ireland, to lead a delegation of 11 Irish parliamentarians to the European Parliament for the European Day of Persons with Disabilities. Some 750 people with disabilities came from across Europe , and we had a very strong delegation. I am delighted to say that Mr. Gary Carney, who is in the Gallery today, was one of the members of that delegation.

We discussed Europe and the world. That issue has been taken up already by Deputy O'Keeffe. We discussed the European Parliament elections in 2019, and the participation of people with disabilities in the election process, which is an issue right here in Ireland that we hope to address. We also discussed the next European Union disability strategy which will follow the current one.

Having said that, I would like to thank Ms Fiona O'Donovan for her presentation. On the third page of her opening statement, she quotes Article 3 of the Treaty of the European Union: "The Union's aim is to promote peace, its values and the well-being of its peoples." She notes that Article 2 sets out a number of values, including respect, human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, etc.

Think of how hard it was to arrive at a European Union. It took two horrendous wars. Countless thousands and millions of people were slaughtered. Others became refugees or were made homeless. A little more than ten years after that war, the European Union came together. We have the values and the statements. We have the history of what it took to pull Europe together. We have the European Union, which is, as Ms O'Donovan has mentioned, a very novel and precious entity in the world. There is no other part of the world that has a regional entity like the EU. We can complain about the EU, but there is nothing else comparable anywhere. We may think about disabled people in Africa and other places. Over the past ten years, the EU and its agencies took a particular approach to the economic crisis, which was one word starting with the letter A: austerity. Given that background, does Ms O'Donovan think that the EU is in a good place at this point or does it need to shift its mindset to be a Union for all its people? She mentioned 80 million with disabilities in the EU, with that number set to increase to 100 million.