Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising the important issue of disability services. The Government cares for people with disabilities and those who care for them. We have made it a priority in the past couple of years to improve rights and services for people with disabilities. I acknowledge that there is an enormous need and that there are many complex individual cases, with which we struggle. The Deputy deals with them in his work as a public representative, as I do. We do our best to resolve them as quickly as we can, but often they can be difficult to resolve, particularly where there are individual issues and they are very complex. However, we are making a great deal of progress. After many failed attempts by many previous Governments, last year we ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The budget for disability services is now €2 billion. It is a very big budget which was increased by €150 million last year. The Deputy is right that we should not just talk about global figures but also about what they mean in terms of their practical impact for citizens with disabilities and the people who care for them. They mean, for example, that we are able to recruit an additional 100 therapists this year. We anticipate that 20 of the 100 will be in place by April which will allow us to reduce waiting times for services such assessments of needs, for which people have been waiting a long time. There is additional investment in respite care services. This time last year we approved additional funding for 12 new respite care houses, of which ten are already open and providing respite care for 578 people. That is very important because family carers get the break they need while the people for whom they are are in respite care.

We extended access to the medical card to children with severe disabilities as a right, regardless of their parents' incomes. In the past, when both the Deputy and I were in government, children with severe disabilities had their entitlement to a medical card assessed on their parents' income. That has all changed and now 40,000 children with severe disabilities have the medical card as a right and their parents need not be concerned about earning too much for fear that their child might lose his or her medical card. We have also changed how the disability allowance works to encourage people with disabilities who can work to enter the workforce, allowing them to keep more of the money they earn. That is making a big difference in the number of people with disabilities who are supported to enter the workforce. We have supported carers. In a few weeks time there will be an increase in the carer's allowance. It will fully reverse all of the cutbacks made in the past. The carer's support grant has been fully restored, while last year we extended free general practitioner, GP, care services to those in receipt of carer's allowance and carer's benefit as a right.

I am running out of time, but that is just a sample of the meaningful practical actions that have been taken by the Government in the past couple of years. Yes, there is more to do. There is always more work to be done, but we will get it done.

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