Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

I commend my colleague, Deputy Ó Snodaigh, and the other Opposition voices in the Chamber who are trying earnestly to rescue this flawed legislation through amendments tabled. They have battled consistently on all Stages. While there is not a significant number of Deputies present, it is important those involved know many Members, including this Deputy, have been watching the debate on each Stage with keen interest. We all know someone in our immediate families or extended relationships in our respective communities for whom the legislation matters.

I am deeply concerned about what the Bill means for those who have campaigned and worked for years, especially the parents of those with physical and intellectual disabilities. They have put a great deal of hope and trust in the process, which, in the later years of their lives, they regard as the last chance they will have to impact collectively and individually on legislation that can make a fundamental difference in the lives of their cherished loved ones. I speak as the sibling of a man with Down's syndrome with the need for access to occasional respite care and, in his middle and later years, residential care and support. I have watched parents turn natural things on their head in prayers asking that their children be taken before them. They feared, as the years advanced, what the future would hold for their special needs children after the parents died. It is a terrible thing and it is the reality for families the length and breadth of Ireland. The legislation will devastate many ageing parents who will feel, on its enactment that they have no further opportunity to make the critical difference in the interests of their special needs loved ones.

For all those reasons, I wish to participate at this juncture to speak to amendment No. 98. The amendment seeks to extend the grounds on which a person with a disability can lodge a complaint to a complaints officer to allow an appeal where a person has been denied his or her right to an assessment of needs. I emphasise the reference to the "right" to an assessment of need. The existing subparagraph (a), to which Deputy Ó Snodaigh referred in his introductory remarks, permits an appeal only on the basis that the assessment officer has determined a person does not have a disability. The disability legislation consultation group flagged this need as one of its five demands. In fact, it is the first of them.

We should remind ourselves of the five demands. First, there must be a clear and unequivocal right to an assessment of need. While it is a simple and basic requirement, the legislation fails the test and denies the right. Second, there must be a right to the provision of services identified within a reasonable and agreed timeframe. Third, there must be clear protection of disability specific resources to allow these rights to be realised. Fourth, there must be a clear duty on all Departments and public bodies to include people with disabilities as of right. According to this duty, each Department must, at minimum, provide a sectoral plan. I will not go on.

It is important to return to the kernel of amendment No. 98 and the associated amendments. We are talking here about the right to an assessment of need. That the Bill does not even guarantee an assessment of need is disgraceful. People with disability across all sectors gather in our capital city as we speak in the House and make their way to the gates of this institution, Tithe an Oireachtas, in which they put their hope and trust that Government will deliver, mindful and reflective of the needs of communities and individual citizens. Today, they will get one of the greatest disappointments in their lives when the bell rings for a division at the 1.30 p.m. guillotine organised by the Government Whip.

While I cannot speak to the views of the junior partner, I have no doubt, having spoken to others of the Minister of State's number within the ranks of his party in Government, that their hearts are not in the Government's approach to the legislation. Members are being marched and whipped in——

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