Ms Fiona Bardon:

The gentleman I spoke of was just one of the main examples I used because I was scrolling back through our WhatsApp group when I was writing my speech. He was the one that stood out most. What seems to happen is, as Ms Farrell has said, a person might get something initially and then when the person applies for it a year or two later and it is denied on different grounds. My understanding of his situation is that because he attempted to end his life, they felt that if he got a wheelchair it would give him more of an opportunity to try it again. This man was bed bound and could not leave his house. He could not go to see his grandchildren. This is why he became so depressed and that is why he wanted to end his life. It does not make any sense to me. Over and over again so many people in our WhatsApp group are saying the exact same thing: "We do not get the funding or we must pay for things ourselves." This is fine if a person has the money. If, however, a person does not have the money then he or she cannot do it. For example, when I presented with the stroke I had had a seizure and broke my left shoulder. Because my stroke was on the left-hand side of my brain it was my right side that was affected. One could say that luckily it balanced itself out somewhat. I was discharged from hospital and I was not able to go to the gym to do classes and so on, things I would normally have been able to do. I got myself a personal trainer recommended by my normal physiotherapist. I had to pay for this myself as there has been no funding for that. Money that I have been saving for years for a deposit for a mortgage is now being put into my physical needs. On top of that there is counselling. I previously attended a counsellor for other issues. As soon as this happened I realised that I would definitely need to go for counselling again. This has also come from the money I had saved towards my future. It is €60 per session. I do not have that kind of money to squander away but my mental health is especially important.

If I do not use this money towards me getting better now, it might mean that I do not have a future. This is a massive thing because I was lucky in that I had been bullied, you could say, by my aunt into getting salary protection when I became a teacher. This salary protection means that I, thankfully, still have 70% of my wage coming in. If I did not have salary protection, I would be getting long-term illness or disability, or whatever it is called at the moment. I have effectively been pensioned off which means I am getting €50 a fortnight because it is based on the amount of service. Therefore, in total I would be getting less than €1,000 a month. I live in Dublin, I rent in Dublin, I have expenses, I have bills, I have to buy food and so on. Aside from that, I have my personal training and my counselling. That costs another €400 per month, which is a lot. At the moment I am getting 70% of my wage, but money is still very tight. Things are expensive. I have car and medical insurance to pay. There are so many other things to pay for, and it is coming up to Christmas. Due to Covid, you cannot go on holidays but these are things I would have taken for granted before. I cannot get my hair and my nails done. I cannot do any of those things anymore because I do not have the money. These are things that are unforeseen.

I am fine now because I have worked so hard physically, but what happens if I have a transient ischemic attack, TIA, in a few years' time? What happens if I go back to work and I realise I am not able for it and I need more speech and language therapy? I am then put on a list and I might not be seen for two years. Why is it not the case that if I realise I cannot do something that I am not assessed within six weeks? When I got out of hospital, I was put on a community speech and language list, although I am not really sure what the programme was. It has been two years and four months since my stroke and I have not heard from them yet. That service does not exist to me. Perhaps the lady went on maternity leave and took extended maternity leave. I have not yet received that phone call and I do not know why I have not.

When I was with my consultant, he told me that I was well able to talk and hold a conversation for ten minutes so he was going to take me off the list for the National Rehabilitation Hospital. Just because I can have a ten minute conversation does not mean I can do anything. It is little things. I can have normal conversations, but I cannot read. I have not been able to read a book or a novel since. I read since I was a child and would have read three books a month. Since then I have read the guts of two books. One of them was from the What a Complete Aisling book series. It was not a book that I had to concentrate on and read every single detail. This is the kind of place where the speech and language therapist might come in.

I cannot speak on behalf of people with physical disabilities because I was really lucky in that I recovered physically. I did not have very much weakness on my right-hand side and because I had broken my left shoulder, it kind of balanced itself out. I am not the best person to talk about physically difficulties because I do not have that general experience. However, I chatted to other people and one of them was said that it was the tiny things that you cannot do. For example, I woke up this morning when my alarm was going off and I rolled over and turned it off. If you cannot turn over in the bed, you cannot turn the alarm clock off yourself. You cannot get out of bed by yourself. You cannot walk to the toilet and you cannot sit on the toilet. You cannot wash your hands by yourself. The gentleman described to me standing and trying to wash his face. His dominant side was affected, so he is now using, let us say, his left hand. He said he was washing everywhere but his face and that by the time his hand got to his face, there was no more water. That is just the first few minutes of the day, and that kind of thing happens all day long.

There are the little things. As I mentioned earlier, what you are trying to say in your head cannot actually come out of your mouth. You do not realise that what you thought you said does not match up exactly with what is coming out of your mouth. You are watching people, you are looking at their reaction and you are trying to watch their body language. You realise that something has gone wrong but you are not quite sure why it has gone wrong. It is with those learning processes over time that you see you have not done something right. You are then trying to hide your deficits. However, in doing so, you are nearly fooling yourself into the fact that you are getting better when you are not. You are just better able to hide what is wrong with you.

I was asked about work. Since I am a teacher, I was told I had to start back on two or three full days a week and then build up to five full days within the space of a term. My neurological team has said I am not allowed to do that and that I have to start with one morning a week, then two mornings a week, then three mornings a week, and build back up that way. However, the work policy around that states that I have to start back at two full days and work up to five full days.

I have gotten on to my union and to the Department of Education directly. There seems to be no give on that. When I asked the reason for that, I was told it was that substitute teachers are paid on a daily basis and not on a half-day basis. It will not let me do one day a week while the substitute does four day. It said that is not possible.

Another frustration for me is that if I return to work two days a week, I will only get two sevenths of my wage because it states there are seven days in a week. We do not work seven days a week; we work five days a week. It does not make any sense why I would only get two sevenths of my wages if I am working two days of the week.

If I decide my working days are Tuesday and Thursday, to give myself Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday to recover before working again, the weekend is still counted as sick leave. I have exhausted all of my sick leave because if you are out on a Friday and a Monday, the Saturday and Sunday are counted as sick leave as well. If you get sick the last day of the school term before the summer and you are sick the first day of the school term in September, all of the summer is counted as sick leave.

I had applied for a career break to go to Dubai. That was the week I got sick, so I did not get on the airplane, thankfully. I was told I would not have survived if I had gotten on the airplane. I applied for sick leave straight away. I was told I was on a career break so tough luck. I did not get my sick leave until a year after. Again, thankfully, salary protection stepped in there for me, so I was okay in that regard.

Obviously, there are other people in my situation as well. When I asked the National Rehabilitation Hospital how we were supposed to get around this, it said there are so many teachers who come through the door that it is impossible. It said it was going to have to see if it could build up my rehab days somewhere else. There was one other thing I was trying to think of but it is gone out of my head.