Erin McGreehan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There is a question of where to start and where to end on this issue. I thank the Minister and the Minister of State for attending and I welcome their commitment to looking at the entire disability services as a rights space, in particular a human rights space. As a society and as a world, we have excluded people with disabilities from taking part in the normal day-to-day things that we all take for granted, such as getting on a bus, going to work, going to a playground or going to school. In all of this, we have created a disability without looking for their abilities. I greatly welcome the commitment on human rights.

Many speakers have referred to the Minister's priority to get people with disabilities into employment.

There is one significant stumbling block. The grant is not applicable to the public service. I know a person who works for local government and begged her line manager, and was told she had to justify her existence to get assistive technology. If she was in the private sector, she could apply straight-up for that. She has been sidelined for career prospects. She has been put down because she does not have access to that technology. To encourage that grant for State bodies would be of benefit. People in them cannot apply for that grant and funding comes out of the bodies' own budgets.

Another problem that I mentioned to the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, on a different occasion is the problem with intellectual disabilities and mental health. If one has an intellectual disability, one does not get access to child and adolescent mental health services. I have met with many groups. Many children with intellectual disabilities suffer from anxiety, autism spectrum disorders and obsessive compulsive disorder, which there are no services to deal with. This is traumatic for the families. They are not able to cope with the disability or with mental health concerns.

One thing that came to me was the fact that there is not enough residential care. Families are in crisis. We have mentioned it here. People are told by the HSE to go to the gardaí and there is nowhere to go. A mother is not going to go and tell the gardaí to take her child away because she cannot cope. There is crisis care but we need to get to a point where we do not have to get to that crisis. A mother who has been attacked by her child should get some help. It seems that there are silos, and people fall between the cracks. Many of us have spoken about falling between the cracks. People know that their children will turn 18. They know their date of birth. There is a significant problem between teenage care and getting into adult care, and they will be adults for much longer than they are children. We need to provide for that.

People fall between the cracks later in life. Senator Higgins mentioned rehabilitative care. If one is under 66, one will get rehabilitation if one has suffered from a stroke, but not if one is over 66 because one is not thought of as a valuable worker who can deliver on a job. That silo of care is troubling. I welcome the Minister's awareness campaign about employment. At council level, I tried to get the economic committee to take on disability-friendly towns, since we have age-friendly towns. We should make this a real focus. We should bring in local enterprise offices and make this part of our mainstream. Disability should not be a niche but part of our lives. They are our brothers, sisters and parents. I welcome the enthusiasm of the Minister and Minister of State, as well as their ability to listen and take matters on board. I look forward to seeing the future of disability under their watchful eye.