Margaret Murphy O'Mahony (Cork South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish to share time with Deputies O'Keeffe, Niamh Smyth, Cahill, Browne, Rabbitte, Donnelly, Breathnach and Aindrias Moynihan.

How we look after and engage with people with disabilities is a hallmark of a caring and compassionate society, and in this House we must set a lead. Fianna Fáil will be supporting the motion. We believe that disability inclusion must be one of the central tenets of the Government.

I note that the Government is not opposing this motion but the Minister of State, Deputy Finian McGrath, should not think that such a move earns him any credibility on the issue. The fact is that in many ways things have gone backwards under his tenure. For example, waiting lists for occupational therapy assessments are up 50% since 2015. There has also been a significant surge in the number of children waiting for assessments of need under the Disability Act 2005. We are awaiting Committee Stage of the Disability (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2016, which is still only half the Bill it should be. One could not make it up. The commitment of the Minister of State to sign the optional protocol at the same time as ratifying the UN convention was not honoured. The Minister of State has a lot of catching up to do if he is to meet his commitments to those with disabilities.

For our part, Fianna Fáil is committed to having a full Minister at the Cabinet table with responsibility for disability issues. We envisage that such a Minister will drive and co-ordinate disability inclusion while also embedding the idea that disability is a cross-departmental issue requiring a whole-of-Government approach and that each Department has responsibility in terms of disability inclusion policy.

The current location of disability policy within the Department of Justice and Equality is not suitable. It has relegated disability to a secondary issue and, as a consequence, we have seen little progress in this area. In government, we would place disability policy within the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection. It is from this Department that many decisions are made that affect those with disabilities and, as a consequence, we believe that disability policy should fall under this Department's remit.

We are also committed to signing up to the optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It is not clear why we are not signing up at this stage. When the Fine Gael and Labour Party Government published a roadmap to ratification of the convention in 2015, a firm intention to sign and ratify the optional protocol was also stated. This was reiterated on behalf of the Government by the Minister of State, Deputy Finian McGrath, at the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice and Equality in December 2016. Figures such as the 4,000 plus children overdue an assessment under the Disability Act show why we must sign up to the protocol.

Figures I received recently show that at the end of January this year, 4,312 children with disabilities were being kept waiting for their statutory right to an assessment under the Disability Act. The number of children waiting had surged from 3,217 in September 2016 to 4,120 at the end of May 2017, an increase of 28%. While the rate of increase has slowed, the fact remains that the position is worse than last summer. It is wrong to have so many children unable to receive their legal entitlement within the statutory timeframe and this must be addressed as a matter of urgency.

As a Cork Deputy, I am particularly concerned that there are 1,869 overdue assessments in the county and city and many of these are in my constituency of Cork South-West. This seems completely disproportionate to the national figures and deserves further scrutiny, but I will talk to the Minister of State about that another day.

Another area where the Government is falling down is where, five years on from its closure to new applicants, we are still awaiting a replacement for the mobility allowance. We also need to see a review of the disabled drivers' and disabled passengers' scheme as nearly 40% of all applicants in 2017 were declined.

I could go on all night. This is a very serious issue. With respect, the Minister of State is falling down on the job. Deputy Finian McGrath may be doing his best but it is just not happening.

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