Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

People with disabilities can be forgiven for asking what is it about this Government and its absolute disregard for the needs of people with disability. It was under this Government that disabled people had to camp outside Government Buildings in order to stop the cuts to support for personal assistants. One might think that a lesson would be learned from that experience but no, in the most crass and ham-fisted way the Government has ended the mobility allowance scheme and the motorised transport grant. This is a very cruel cut. No other word applies. The Government can talk all it likes about the money being ring-fenced but that is no good to the person who has the mobility allowance now and will not have it in four months' time. People affected by this cut have been in contact with my office today, as I expect is the case across the board.

One of my constituents who called me is a double amputee. I have met him on several occasions. He said these are not easy schemes to qualify for in any event. He put it starkly, "I ended up having to lose two legs before I qualified". In addition to that severe disability this man is also visually impaired. His home help hours have already been cut from nine and a half hours to eight and a half hours per week. He requires 11 items of medication and his monthly prescription charge has risen from €5.50 to €16.50. All of these cuts were imposed by this Government, not by its predecessors.

The Department of Health has known since at least 2008 that the schemes as applied were discriminatory and the Ombudsman, Emily O'Reilly, has pointed out that they were in breach of the Equal Status Act since 2000. The Fianna Fáil-Green Party Government failed to act. That is acknowledged. What of the so-called democratic revolution that this Government has spoken about and heralded since the general election of February 2011? Lo and behold Fine Gael and Labour have acted no differently from their predecessors. They have neither extended nor replaced these schemes. This is a cruel cut for people with disabilities, especially those who reside in rural Ireland who cannot avail of public transport because in vast swathes of rural Ireland, including the two counties that I represent there is no public transport. The Government has axed these schemes and not replaced them and tells us that there is a review. Why not continue the payments as they are until the review concludes and a fair replacement scheme is decided upon? The Government has winged it this far.

By failing to take this logical course of action the Government leads us to only one conclusion, that this is another cutback by another name. I will quote from the programme for Government just to remind the Minister of State that it stated:

We will ensure that the quality of life for people with disabilities is enhanced and that resources allocated reach the people who need them... We will also facilitate people with disabilities in achieving a greater level of participation in employment, training and education.

Where is the evidence for this?

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