Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I start by saying well done on budget 2021. That level of funding will be transformative for many disability services. It is really important. I have a number of questions. If the Minister and Minister of State do not have the answers, they might come back to me at a later date or write to me. I would like an update of where we are with regard to the Disability (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2016. This was to have been put through the Dáil but, obviously, fell in January 2020. All of us on this committee are grappling with how we use the UNCRPD as a mechanism to improve how we deal with disability services and strengthen statutory instruments in place. For example, we are quite unique in the EU insofar as we have a centre for excellence in universal design that has a statutory underpinning. I have visited that centre. There is great knowledge. How do the Minister and Minister of State envisage us harnessing the kind of services we have? Organisations such as the National Transport Authority do not always utilise statutory instruments like that pertaining to universal design? How can we, therefore, use this committee to strengthen those kind of mechanisms? That will be enduring impact of a committee such as this.

I read through all the briefing notes for today. Something that struck me is that, as per usual, we have a significant number of good ideas around disability but many of them are geared towards input. We have a plan, we have a report, and this is how we are going to do things. I wonder whether over the lifetime of this committee, we can focus on outputs. Bearing in mind Deputy Tully's point about asking in different committees, I have been doing that for disability. When the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform appeared before the Committee of Public Accounts, I asked it to write back to me about how many people in the Civil Service report having a disability. The Department's target is 3%. We did not get a departmental breakdown or what those disabilities are. When the Department wrote back, it said that the figure was 4.3%. That does not sound too bad. It must be remembered that the Civil Service is expected to be one of the better employers. It would probably be interacting with the National Disability Authority and utilising all the recommendations from the comprehensive employment strategy so it is probably doing all the right things. A figure of 4.3% does not sound too bad. More than 10% of staff in the civil service in the UK report having a disability. We all know that Ireland has incredibly low levels of employment engagement in the disability community. The EU average is something like 57% whereas the figure is 36.5% in Ireland. I guess it is an open-ended question. How can we ensure that with all the good reports and good intentions we have and that incredible funding we can set up mechanisms that are based on outputs? Are those numbers moving up? Are we putting funding in the right place?

I will pick up on Senator Seery Kearney's point about the primary medical certificate because I raised it at the Joint Committee on Health with the Minister for Health. Assessments for a primary medical certificate are suspended at the moment, which is incredibly serious. I stopped short of asking the Minister to put people in a room and not let them out until that is solved but I am pretty close to that. It is urgent. Could the Minister and Minister of State could give an undertaking to work with the Minister for Health to sort that out as a matter of extreme urgency?