Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair, and everybody who came in and made their contributions. I will not go back on any old ground. I want to run a few things by the witnesses, first of all in the area of housing supports.

First, I want to say that the local authorities, including Galway County Council in particular, which I deal with all the time, are absolutely fantastic in what they do regarding the administration and inspections, and getting the money out to people for housing adaptation and mobility aids grants. The work which they do is absolutely unbelievable and unfortunately, the demand is increasing, but they are actually coping with that.

As an example of an area I think is missed, a family has a child has been diagnosed with a disability, which will be ongoing. They are selling their house to build a new house, and to have it built for the purposes of this child, for their lives. I do not believe there are any grants available in that case. Maybe there are, but it is a gap where I cannot find any funding, whereas if they were adapting their own house, they would get some funding towards that. Where that cannot be done, it is important that some sort of support be made available to somebody building a new house, which is built to suit the needs of their family.

For the Department of Social Protection, I have one issue. I will give an example of a man with a disability who is in receipt of a disability allowance. On getting married, he loses his disability allowance because his wife is working. In my books, that is wrong. Anybody who is getting a disability allowance or payment does so because they have a disability. The fact that a person gets married does not mean that the disability has gone away. It is an example of something I would say is just not right. We can talk about all the things we want but anyone who has a disability, regardless of his or her circumstances, should be entitled to get the disability allowance or payment. The circumstances of such people have not changed, other than that they got married. They would have been better off if they never got married, never said anything, and held on to their entitlements. That is wrong, so the witnesses might comment on that.

To return to the issue of Emily Conway, who has articulated this to us, it is not just about Ms Conway but about a lot of people in the artistic field who find, where they get a bursary and win a prize or whatever, that it is taken into account. It restrains them from getting themselves involved in exploring things and challenging themselves. They feel that were they to win something or to get a bursary, it would affect their basic payments and it might affect their medical card or something else down the road. We need to have a recognition that where a person as a disability and is an artist, we should actually do the opposite. We should encourage them to flourish.

With regard to the LEADER programme, I would say that it is a great programme, and Galway Rural Development administered the last one in north Galway, which is my area. It has built up great expertise right across many aspects of life, community life and whatever else. It is hugely proactive in all things. There is the issue of farming and encouraging farmers to create enterprises like gardening tunnels, where they bring in people with disabilities. This would not be tokenism, but people could actually gain skills and earn money. We need to encourage that more, and in the next round of LEADER, we should be driving that, in order that people with disabilities, who are into that area and like that type of work, are encouraged. We should also encourage the farmers and farm families to get involved, and ensure they are supported more to put in the investment, so we can create something like that. Again, the LEADER programme has been very good for rural Ireland and I want to acknowledge that.

Finally, I will go back to the child I know who was born blind. The child is now progressing to secondary school. Every time they have to apply for something new or must do something, they have to go back and prove that the child is still blind. They have to start from scratch and prove over and over again that nothing has changed. The diagnosis on day one was that this child will never be anything other than blind. Why must somebody, who has a disability which is going to be with them for the rest of his or her life, produce all the doctors' reports? Why do such people have to do everything again? This is where the all-of-government approach comes in. The information is either in the HSE, the Department of Social Protection, or wherever it is, but that person should have a badge to say: "We have a free pass here. We do not have to prove ourselves again."

If anything were to be taken from my humble contribution, it is that they might consider that as something that would give an awful lot of relief to a lot of people and parents in this country who have, or work with, disabilities. I know everybody is doing their best.

I think especially of children who get a diagnosis. There is great joy when they are born, and then something might be found wrong. There is a huge coping challenge for the parents themselves, who might now have something long term to deal with. As politicians and as Departments, we need to understand that we need to give these parents every help along the way. We should not be putting barriers in the way. As I have said, there are great examples of things that have been done very well. We need to try and be best in class, in every Department and across government. It is not easy. Sometimes there are money constraints. Right now, people will tell you that we are flush with money and can do whatever we want. We cannot really. We need to look at people with disabilities in the era we are now in, where there might be a little extra money. I hope, when the Minister does the review of grants, that he will increase the income thresholds and the amounts available. That is not a criticism. With construction inflation and the more complex situations that arise, it is best that we help people.

Coming from a construction background I know it is a lot easier to build a purpose-built facility from scratch than to try to retrofit it later. We need to look at universal design, in the private and public sector, when it comes to how we are building our housing and other buildings in the future. On employability, I find that is one of the barriers for people in wheelchairs. They would love to work in such a place. They check with the employer, and the employer would love to have them. However, they are upstairs and they have no lift or disabled toilet. Those barriers still exist across the area. We need to encourage employers to improve their workplaces so they can be universally accessible.