Mr. Martin Naughton:

In case Deputy Ó Caoláin might think we forget, we do not. Many people with disabilities are on permanent allowance etc. Disability allowance in particular of the three major allowances there, is the lowest paid. Yet they are not entitled to go on the unemployment register so we are trapped. If there is 200% employment in the country, we cannot get on to that employment register because we are locked into a kind of thing. Of course if we manage to break through that, like some of us have, we are okay, but most people are trapped there - 105,000 at the moment. They cannot get onto any of these schemes or anything like that. In terms of housing, the 3% quota and all of those, they have cut in the first year alone the lowest people.

I could go on forever talking about the cut in PA services, less housing and education. The Deputy knows them all and could rehearse them all. That does not mean the pain is less this year. Actually the pain is greater this year because now depression has replaced hope in many of these families.

If we talk about alcoholism, obesity, drugs, etc., they come about through the absence of education. We have parents today who need much more support and time than ever before because they have no extended families to support them, educate them and bring them through. I am talking about parents. They do not realise it until it is too late and obesity has already set in. They do not realise they have often been facilitating it. The bottom line of that is that community does not care anymore. Community is very much what the British introduced in the 1970s when they had community care but no care in the community. That is the problem we have and we had better wake up. It is all ahead of Deputy Regina Doherty.