John Dolan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

It was good to hear mention made of Mr. Martin Naughton and the late Mr. Dermot Walsh, God rest them both. It is all about people. Deputy Durkan spoke about families and the idea that the burden does not get easier. It is quite the opposite. I thought ambition and not being encouraged was a theme that came across from pretty much all of the speakers. I may not have very pointed questions but some things struck me. Project management comes to mind. It is the person with the disability and the family who have to be experts in this. It is one of the 32, 33 or 34 skills that Mr. Mark O'Connor spoke about. It is the public service, with all of its different entities, that needs to do the project management. People said that today in many different ways. All the forms are the same and they have to be gone over repeatedly to try to keep things moving.

Deputy Joan Collins spoke about austerity. It reminded me, and people might have a comment on this, that the Central Statistics Office figures early last year, I think it was, showed that poverty is getting worse for people with disabilities while at the same time, and this is good news, things are improving for people in general. While no one is against that happening, things are pulling apart. It is not only money but also other issues. I would be interested in comments on that.

Mr. Mark O'Connor mentioned poor value for money in this country. We have more spending than investment. There is not the bang for the buck that either serves the people who pay the money into the pot or the people who are to get the services.

I refer also to comments about the employability programme. I do have a pointed question now. Was that a way of saying that was working at the wrong end of the stick, so to speak, and that it was focusing on people who are job ready? It seems to me that the real problem is all the bits needed to get people job ready.

Mr. Robert Murtagh and others made a point about there being a whole battery of supports for people going to third level, including access programmes and access officers. I am sure improvements are being made there. It strikes me that the area of further education, the old fashioned vocational education committees, VECs, or education and training boards, ETBs, as they are now called, that are around the corner and should be more flexible have no practical supports in place. I got a representation recently from a young women who is a wheelchair user. I will not mention the college but it is a further education college. She was applying to do a media or journalism course. The college in question does have an accessible toilet but she needed a hoist in that toilet. The response she got within a month of a meeting happening - just the other day - was that the college was sorry but that was something that the young woman was going to have to sort out herself because the college was not in a position to provide that hoist.

While I deliberately do not want to mention name, rank or serial number, what I want to get at here is that there is an attitude or a culture that the system does not allow for this. I think the words used were "we are not obliged". This was mentioned by many people at this meeting. My heart sank while another part of me was getting angry, but it was mostly that my heart sunk. We are talking about a person who wants a bit of a dig out. It not as if the national development plan is going to be cut in half because of it. People might comment on that issue of attitude or culture. Other than that, I am delighted to hear and see the interest of my Oireachtas colleagues and their commitment to moving this on in various committees. It is right that the report will animate this and we will have different kind of conversation with departmental officials.