Pat Breen (Clare, Fine Gael)

I wish to share my time with Deputy Hayes. I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this important Bill which I am sure is being watched closely by all concerned citizens as an indictor of how well the State intends to treat the most vulnerable and those most in need in society. There are 360,000 people with disabilities in this country with many thousands more caring and supporting them every day. Despite this statistic, this group often finds it difficult to have its voice heard by policymakers. I want to help put that right. These thousands of people have struggled to have their voices heard for many years. The House will recall the campaign for disability legislation by the Forum for People with Disabilities began as far back as 1990. Some 12 years later, the Government made a failed attempt to address the need with the 2002 Disability Bill. It was a Bill written in haste and without due consideration for those most affected.

The Government's latest attempt to remedy a situation it should have remedied years ago is before the House. Given that the Government has had 14 years to address concerns and has gone through the failed experience of the 2002 Bill, one would have thought that this Bill would have done the job. Unfortunately, it does not. Comprehensive and adequate legislation to address the needs of the disabled community and incorporating the excellently articulated requirements of their representative groups should include some essential elements such as a right to an independent assessment and services, an independent appeals and complaints procedure, meaningful targets in regard to employment and access to buildings and a wide definition of disability which would include those with mental health problems.

Since 1992, the Government has commissioned and paid for three consultative groups to make recommendations. Their output was the basis for a good disability Bill. However, the Government has ignored the results. While it employs the language in the reports of these groups, it does not employ the substance. The substance of the recommendations of three excellent consultative groups has been ignored.

The Bill does not contain the essential elements I have outlined. It is inadequate and forces disabled people into a bureaucratic nightmare. It forces people to search and scrape for essential services. When individuals like Séamus Green of the National Parents and Siblings Alliance say things such as "We are reasonable people" and "We don't expect miracles", it makes me wonder what world the Government lives in or wants us to live in. Carers, parents and siblings deserve reasonable treatment. Given the work they do day in, day out, they deserve miracles. Disabled people deserve better from the Government and deserve better legislation.

These people should certainly have a right to an independent assessment and, crucially, to services. They should have an independent appeals and complaints procedure. They deserve meaningful targets in regard to employment and access to buildings. There should be a wider definition of disability that would include those with mental health problems.

As legal experts on the subject have argued, there is a fundamental difference between the attitude to equality within European law and that adopted by the Government. The approach taken by the European Union is to enforce equality by means of a legal right not to be discriminated against, harassed or victimised and a right to reasonable accommodation. Should an employer or service provider not comply with the right to equality, the employee or service receiver may seek redress in the courts. The Bill does not deliver these rights to our disabled people. It is not as if the Government did not have the time to get this right. It had plenty of time.

The disability legislation consultative group met the Minister of State at the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy Fahey, last year to express its concerns. It also met the Taoiseach and had hoped for a positive response to the reasonable amendments. That group, which represents 597 organisations, said there were fundamental flaws in the Bill, yet the same legislation is before the House.

As with much of Government policy in recent years, the Bill appears to ignore the realities, for example, in my constituency of Clare, with which the Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Killeen, is aware. The personal assistant service is vital for people with disabilities. This issue highlights a flaw in the Bill. There are 30 people in Clare who have been assessed for the personal assistant service and are on a waiting list two years later. The Bill will not help those 30 people or their families or any other family in a similar situation.

The Bill may guarantee the right to an assessment, but without rights to services, it is fundamentally flawed. Disabled persons cannot take up work with large employers such as the Army, the Garda or the Naval Service. The 3% employment targets points also to another flaw in the Bill. The definition of disability used to assess how this target is being met is less strict than the general definition in the Bill. Therefore, when the Government is being tested, a condition such as asthma can be considered a disability, but in the general context of the Bill, the disability must be persistent and ongoing. This excludes those in the early stages of conditions, for example, those with multiple sclerosis. It also excludes those with conditions that can seriously disable them. The Government wants it both ways; strict definition in terms of rights and looser definition in terms of assessing whether the 3% employment target has been met.

We had the shocking 50% cutback in the annual budget in the Mid-Western Health Board area for the special respite home purchased for the Brothers of Charity in Ennis. Some of the children need 2:1 staffing levels. The home was unable to provide respite care for the children who need it most. The inadequacies of the system and what it provides for people with disabilities and their carers are obvious and disgraceful. People are at the end of their tether. The position has deteriorated to such a degree that one of my constituents, who is in a wheelchair, resorted to telling the Minister that if it were physically possible, he would chain himself to the railings of Dáil Éireann and stay there until disabled people got the recognition they deserve.

In 1999, a ten-point plan drawn up by groups representing people with disabilities was published in Ennis. The plan, drawn up by the Centre for Independent Living in conjunction with the information age town project, the Central Remedial Clinic and the Disabled People of Clare, called on the Government to bring forward changes for people with disabilities to achieve full social, civil and political rights. Those are needs and realities for the 360,000 disabled people in Ireland, those in Clare, and their carers, families and siblings. This is what was expected from the legislation. The assessment of the legislation is best carried out by those who will be most affected by it and they have handed down their assessment.

Some time ago, 700 disabled people, their families and carers packed the RDS and Leinster House at a public meeting. They highlighted ten serious flaws and described it as forcing disabled people into a bureaucratic nightmare. Let us take, for example, a disabled person who wishes to make a complaint about service provision. The Bill places four layers of bureaucracy between them and resolution of their complaint and the process can take up to 18 months. This is after years on a waiting list. When it comes to access to buildings, they face more bureaucracy. The Bill places the burden of proving inaccessibility on the disabled person. Any reasonable person can see that placing sole responsibility on the person in this case is wholly unsatisfactory and shameful.

Even if the Minister did not like what he was hearing from the representative groups of persons with disabilities when they made their assessment, the Government should have heeded the views of the Human Rights Commission. The State should set itself to be judged by the highest standards of international law given our economic status and the citizens' desire to see fair treatment for the vulnerable in society. Instead, the President of the Human Rights Commission, Dr. Maurice Manning, said the legislation was defective based on analysis of international law.

Those most affected by the Bill call it flawed while those charged with monitoring rights call it defective. In its current state, the Bill is an insult to disabled persons, their families and carers and is more evidence, if we needed it, of the Government's detachment from the realities of people's lives.

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