Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am pleased to support the Bill, which is a matter of some urgency given the failure of the State throughout its history to provide basic rights. I disagree with some of the points Fianna Fáil made. I supported the Bill that was proposed by Deputy Pringle in 2015 when the Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Labour parties voted against it. The Labour Party had previously supported it, but it seems to have changed its mind again.

I was horrified last week to read an article in The Irish Timesin which Tanya Ward, the CEO of the Children's Rights Alliance, stated that some 25% of Traveller and Roma children do not have access to sanitation and running water. She stated that this probably goes some way to explaining why their infant mortality rate is almost four times higher than that in the settled community. If they were to provided for in the Constitution, the right of access to water and sanitation would be one of the economic, social and cultural rights. I do not see why families should not be able to take the State to task for not providing those basic human rights.

It is also the case that Traveller families experience overcrowding in their living accommodation. The figure is 8% for settled communities. We know that the local authorities are handing back money to the State because they have not used it. If the right to housing was provided for in our Constitution and money was allocated and not spent, should those people not have the right to challenge the State for not providing the housing given the money was available? The resources are in the coffers of the local authority but at this stage they can be handed back without anyone being able to challenge the situation. This is simply an outrage in a prosperous country in the 21st century.

One third of all children live in poverty or are at risk of poverty. Some 2,500 children are in emergency accommodation. Despite the promises of the Minister, most of them will still be there after June of this year. We know that to be the case because more families are entering emergency accommodation than are leaving it. We have inherited a situation of historically low levels of public services and are unique in Europe with a health service that has no universal entitlement. We are also unique in that our welfare provision has only one universal entitlement, which is child support payments.

I am a member of the Committee on the Future of Healthcare. As a consequence, my parliamentary assistant has carried out a lot of research into the health service, how it operates, the history of its development and so on, and a clear thread has emerged: There is no concept whatsoever that affordable health care is a right. This does not just apply to the health services. The Bill proposed by Deputy Pringle seeks to insert such a right into our Constitution, based on resources.

I raised a question today relating to families in St. John of God's that cannot access multidisciplinary teams due to the cuts to the services over the past eight years. I have a copy of a letter from the HSE which states:

Referrals to the MDT are prioritised by the school principal. [In this school, the team] lost a number of positions for therapy staff during the moratorium on recruitment and has limited capacity for the provision of therapy interventions. Under the current system a duel referral for services is not accepted. In effect a referral for a child attending a special school with it's own MDT [which this school does not have] such as [St. John of God's] will not be accepted by another MDT.

If the right to health was provided for in our Constitution, those families could challenge the State and say that they should be able to go somewhere else to get a multidisciplinary team to look after their children given they cannot access basic speech therapy, psychotherapy and so forth.

We are still providing health care for those who cannot afford to pay as an act of charity. It is still the case that the mindset has hardly moved on from the 19th century. The mindset that the State can abdicate its responsibility to provide services that are a right and can farm out its responsibilities to charities has had horrifying consequences. Putting economic, social and cultural rights into the Constitution at the same level as civil and political rights would be a significant step forward. There would still be a question of resources and willpower, but campaigners would be in a better position to fight for economic, social and cultural rights for all citizens.

I urge Deputies to support the Bill.

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