Olivia Mitchell (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the motion tabled by Fine Gael, the Labour Party and the Green Party, which I support unequivocally. Nevertheless I cannot help feeling a certain sense of futility and déjÀ vu as I stand to speak yet again on this topic. I cannot think of any matter that has been the subject of more Private Members' motions than this and yet here we are again. It is a subject that touches virtually all of us as the spectrum of disability is enormous. If it does not touch us directly it touches someone close to us. Therefore, we all strongly and passionately feel the need for change. Uniquely this is a cross-party belief and commitment. However, despite the genuinely universal support for the disabled, nothing ever seems to change for the better. In every aspect of the service there is queuing, rationing and under provision. There is a battle for every service and in some cases there is no provision at all.

This does not come as a surprise to either side of the House and those on this side of the House do not have a monopoly on caring. We are not alone in being outraged, embarrassed and diminished by the growing divergence between the quality of life enjoyed by the majority of us in this modern, proud and prosperous country and the half-life we see being endured by so many of the disabled and their families. However, if we are all so committed, then why do things not get better for the disabled? Why are they always left waiting for better times, an Exchequer surplus, another Celtic tiger, a Special Olympics, or another "Prime Time" exposé? It is because there is no clear overall strategy, implementation plan, or funding linked to a plan for the realisation of clearly articulated and commonly understood objectives.

In seeking this, the motion goes to the very nub of the problem. We need a national strategy for the progressive realisation of rights to provision over an agreed timeframe setting in place the capacity building measures necessary, identifying the capital and current resources needed and preparing a plan to eliminate all waiting lists for services within three years.

Without this we will go on as before, waiting for the pressure on services to build to the point where the many individual private crises explode to become a major public scandal. We will lurch from crisis to crisis and will deal in a fragmented way with individual aspects of disability. As politicians we will be content when we resolve the immediate crisis in one family, yet thousands of families will continue to wait for the next Celtic tiger or sadly until death makes their problem redundant. Even more sadly some families wish for that.

We cannot continue as we have done in the past with the piecemeal response to individual campaigns — concessions given to individual groups in the hope they will go away and leave the Government alone for a while. We cannot continue to have Private Members' motions in response to a "Prime Time" exposé or some other effort by the media to dip into the issue of disability. We need a more permanent solution. The aim must be for a coherent integrated strategy so that no matter what the disability or age of the person, at the very least a floor level of appropriate service will automatically become available to support the patient and family, and it must be a floor with no cracks.

The range of disability is enormous, including disability caused by mental ill health, which is often forgotten, despite being the cause of 20% of all disability. We have intellectual disability, and physical and sensory disability. Some are born disabled and some become disabled as a result of an accident or an illness, perhaps a degenerative and ultimately fatal one. However, whatever the source or the category of disability they all have one thing in common, the impact it has on their families and the extent to which it is a permanent life changing experience not just for the patients but also for their families. The greater the disability the greater the dependence, the greater the impact on the family and the greater the change they must endure.

The diagnosis that a child is disabled is devastating. The diagnosis that a formerly healthy bread winner husband has a degenerative disease is devastating for a young mother with young children. Almost overnight such families are faced with new needs they never expected to have, and are ill-equipped to meet the emotional, psychological, practical, monetary and medical needs. If the carers in such a family do not get support, are left to cope alone and do not get respite, as sure as night follows day, they too will collapse and will not be able to cope. If they collapse, the whole family collapses and becomes the responsibility of the State with all the long-term consequences this implies, particularly for children. So instead of one dependent person, we then have an entire family dependent on the State.

Luckily for the State, this does not happen very often because it is the nature of families, parents and loved ones to give everything and to push their caring role to the very edge of their physical and emotional endurance. I regret to say the State knows this and plays on it. We abuse their love of their dependent person because we know they will keep going. We know they will eventually become too exhausted to sustain campaigns to highlight their plight. We know they will quietly go home and we will not hear from them again until some other case hits the media or there is some other "Prime Time" exposé.

I want to highlight changes urgently required to help families. Every health board should have a care manager as a point of contact for people struck by disability who would co-ordinate all services. Those struck by disability often do not know what services are available or even what services they need. They could include the provision of a wheelchair, social welfare payments, form filling and getting the required documents. People complain that every service seems to require individual forms to be completed. Could this not be streamlined so that at least this aspect of disability is made easier? It seems as if every application is made onerous simply to postpone the determination of eligibility.

There are many other aspects which one of my colleagues or I may be able to raise tomorrow night. I ask the Government to heed this motion and not to insult carers or the disabled by yet again giving us a litany of all it has done for them and all it is going to do. I ask every backbencher who has ever witnessed the despair of carers pushed to the brink, to support the motion and not to allow this scandal, which reflects on all of us, to continue.

See this speech in context