Sandra McLellan (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this issue. In many respects, this is an issue unlike any other in that it highlights the extraordinary lengths to which the Government is willing to go to appease its European masters. What rationale would see differently abled people and the State supports that allow them to live with dignity as fair game when it comes to Government cutbacks?

Unfortunately, the facts speak for themselves. As a result of Government policy, disabled people are now more at risk of falling into consistent poverty than they were two years ago. I am not suggesting this diverse group ever had things easy to begin with. The 2011 census shows that of the 13% of people with a disability, more than 16% of those aged between 15 to 49 years had not completed a level of education higher than primary school. In the general population, the comparable figure is 5%. In the area of employment only 30% of people with a disability are active in the labour force compared to 61.9% of the overall population. Even more startling is that according to census figures just under 200,000 people or 4.1% of the population were providing unpaid assistance to others in 2011. Of these, 61% were women and, even more shocking, 2.3% were children under the age of 15 years.

I have no wish to engage in a bleeding heart rant about all the different areas of society where disabled people are under-represented or excluded. Suffice to say that on all the key indicators, including education and employment, people with a disability experience higher levels of exclusion than those in the general population. Furthermore, when it comes to accessing health care and housing, all the evidence suggests further exclusion and discrimination.

Differently abled people are not some special species. They are Irish citizens who have, in theory at least, the same rights and responsibilities as the rest of us. However, if one happens to have a disability or one is the parent or sibling of a disabled child or adult, the future is bleak. It does not have to be like this because the Government could, if it so wished, exercise its power to change this dreadful situation.

The figures I cited are all taken from the 2011 census. Since then, the Government has slashed home help hours and reduced by an estimated 25% funding to many of the voluntary organisations that work with disabled people and their families. As if to symbolically tear up its programme for Government, it also scrapped the mobility allowance recently. While we should never confuse ethics with politics as they are distinctly different fields, as elected representatives, we have nevertheless a duty to ask why someone would defend such draconian and downright cruel policy decisions.

In my constituency of Cork East I know of one 40 year old man who has worked in sheltered employment for the past 22 years. The individual in question, who has cerebral palsy, lives with his elderly mother and going to work is the highlight of his week. Outside of his mother, it provides him with his only other source of social interaction. He was in receipt of €50 a week towards the cost of a taxi which took him to and from work. In total, the fare came to €100, with the additional €50 coming from his disability allowance. Such was the importance of work to him that he told me he simply had to get to his place of employment. What, one wonders, does the Government expect him to do now that his allowance has been withdrawn? How, in heaven's name, is he supposed to get to work?

Sinn Féin supports the motion and calls on the Government to immediately restore the mobility allowance and give an undertaking that it will, for the duration of its time in office, ring-fence all services for the disabled. People with a disability did not cause the economic crash and they should not be made pay for it with cruel and ill thought out policies.

See this speech in context