Mr. Desmond Kenny:

For clarity, there are currently just over 2,000 users of PAs in Ireland, not hundreds of thousands of disabled people. Many do not receive the hours they need to live the lives of their choosing. Many more disabled people, regardless of impairment, could benefit from some support both inside and outside their homes to live the lives of their choosing.

This is not a significant strain on the Exchequer or society. Indeed, it is the opposite; it is central to enabling many disabled people to live lives and not just survive. Ireland wants to be a paragon of modern social equality, forward-thinking and open. Then let us start here. We hear at a statutory level of a commitment to a rights-based, social model approach to disability, of moving away from a charity and medical model. Investing, standardising and legislation for PAS is fundamental to that approach. We do not need to reinvent the wheel; we can see how other EU countries of a similar size and social values do it properly. This is not a new issue, it is three decades in the making, and if this Government, or the next, wants to be genuinely committed to equality, than this needs to be addressed as a priority to realise disabled people’s rights under our commitments in the UNCRPD.