Dáil debates

Tuesday, 19 November 2019

Personal Assistance Service: Motion

 

9:45 pm

Photo of Timmy DooleyTimmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish to take this opportunity to thank Deputy Pringle and others for bringing this important motion to the House. I am very familiar with the issue of personal assistance and its importance to the lives of people with disabilities. I am in this position because of a very strong advocacy group that has existed in County Clare for many years. This very strong and active advocacy group, which I still refer to as the Disabled People of Clare but which has now morphed into the Independent Living Group, is very much part of the national forum. It is a wonderful group of people which campaigned as far back as 1992 to advance the lives of people with disabilities. I think of people like Ann Marie Flanagan, Dermot Hayes, Thomas Connole and my friend, the late Tom King, who put such a huge effort into advancing the cause of people with disabilities and who campaigned to demand personal assistance hours. It would be wrong not to mention the late Martin Naughton, who spent many days and nights in Clare and was a national figure in this regard. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to those who advanced this cause under the banner of the Centre for Independent Living long before it became fashionable to talk about the issue in this House.

Personal assistance hours are an essential component of the services required by people with a disability. It is about equality, respect and dignity. It is about a basic human right for people with a disability. People with a disability are not different but their needs and the services they require are different. To ensure equality in a civilised, mature and modern society, we need to provide appropriate funding for personal assistance hours.

My party has advanced a proposal to double the number of hours over the next five years, which is something we have to strive for and achieve. It is not just about agreeing a motion; rather, it is about signing up to that principle now. I would like to see us, as a Parliament, go further than that over the intervening years. We have demand-led services in this country, and I cannot think of anything more important than the provision of personal assistance hours on a demand led-basis. While I accept the financial constraints, if we can double the amount of hours available over the next five years we will have done a lot. However, we should not be prepared to sit on our hands thereafter.

We need short, medium and long-term goals. A medium-term goal for me would be to bring personal assistance hours into a demand-led service. We cannot have situations like that to which our party's spokesperson on disability referred, where hundreds of people are waiting. What are they waiting for? Are they waiting for somebody to die before they get hours? That is not acceptable.

In the past couple of days we have spent a lot of time talking about a Supreme Court case concerning privacy and dignity for people who are in prison and the services available to them. What about privacy and dignity for people with a disability who are attempting to live in their own homes, work and socialise? If we are serious about providing equality in society for people with disabilities we will advance this case exceptionally quickly.

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