Tom Clonan (Independent)
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On the issue of the medical model, Ireland is so much an outlier that we do not even meet the basic threshold for compliance with the medical model. We have children who cannot get routine surgeries. I have noticed that some Government figures have begun to mobilise the medical model as a way of saying, "That is the medical model” or "Diagnosis is a bad word" but we are not even there when it comes to really life-changing, life-limiting and life-altering consequences for disabled citizens. Obviously, the social model and a holistic approach is what we are all striving for but I have heard the language around the medical model being mobilised as a sort of smokescreen to deflect from the abject lack of services.

Other jurisdictions are able to provide assessments of need several times in the developmental life of a child, teenager and adult. They provide multiple assessments of need. Some jurisdictions do an assessment of need every two or five years, and they provide the services and supports that are set out. The Government is trying to create a narrative of a mutually exclusive notion that we cannot have an assessment of need and services and that it is either one or the other. I cannot think of a better phrase for that than "properly bonkers".