Tom Clonan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair and speakers. I am conscious of time so I will be as brief as I can.

I have two short questions but before I ask them I congratulate Peter Kearns, Joe McGrath, Nem Kearns and Elaine Grehan because I agree that DPOs must be front and centre. If DPOs received the funding that service providers receive, they would be in a better position to attend all the networks. If PAs were available, Mr. Kearns could attend participation networks and so on. Fundamentally, if people cannot get on the train and DART, they cannot participate in anything. They cannot go to the place where the wheelchair accessible shelf is. I do not mean to be smart about that. My son is at home. He cannot use the DART because the stations are unmanned and the DART carriages are inaccessible. This leads me to my first question.

As the Deputy stated earlier, train stations are inaccessible to people with disabilities. My first question is whether the funding Departments should withdraw funding from Irish Rail if they are discriminating against people with disabilities. If people were not allowed to use the train on the basis of their ethnicity, for example, if there was a rule that people from Asia or black people could not use the train, Irish Rail would be defunded. If people from the LGBTQIA community were barred from using trains or the DART, we would not fund Irish Rail. We would not allow them to provide services if they were explicitly discriminatory. It is accepted because it applies to people with disabilities.

I ask my second question of Mr. Mulholland. My son is 20 and he applied to the housing list for an accessible housing unit in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown when he was 18 as he is a wheelchair user. Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown is in HSE CHO 6. It is one of the most desirable places to live in Ireland because of the services although they are almost non-existent. They are non-existent elsewhere so a place with almost non-existent services is one of the best places. We were told that the waiting list for an accessible housing unit for him - he is in receipt of disability allowance - is between 18 and 20 years. Does Mr. Kearns know the average wait time on a housing list for a person with a disability throughout the council areas? Where is the best place to go on a waiting list? If Mr. Mulholland does not have that information, why does he not? Is it not recorded? The reason I ask that question is not just because of my personal situation with my son, but because 27% of homeless people sleeping in doorways and on streets are persons with intellectual and physical disabilities.

Those are my two brief questions. I thank the witnesses for appearing before the committee, particularly in today's awful weather. I congratulate all the speakers. I can speak to this because an article of the UNCRPD recognises the legitimacy of contributions made by people who are family members or carers of people with disabilities. Service providers and other groups that are led by people who do not have disabilities are well funded and when their representatives attend consultancy networks, they are paid salaries, mileage and subsistence payments, whereas people with disabilities are expected to rock up even though it is hard for them to get out the front door in the morning. One of the reasons I was late this morning is that my son's carer was late because carers are not paid between visits and they struggle to get through traffic and heavy rain. It is almost impossible so the least we could do is fund the DPOs and honour our commitments under the UNCRPD to have them front and centre. I congratulate Mr. Sherwin. I agree with him.