Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome those in the Visitors Gallery, particularly Senator John Dolan, whom I thank for his very constructive ongoing assistance provided for all Deputies in dealing with matters of disability.

I wanted to start by thanking the Minister of State but I am afraid I cannot do so because having listened to both ministerial speeches, I am in despair at the failure of both Ministers of State to grasp what the motion is about.I welcome the fact they are not opposing it but that begs the question of what they are going to do with the motion. We are calling for action. We are calling for a commissioner within the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection. Will the Government please address the motion? If it is not opposing it, what will it do with it and in what space of time?

This debate takes place against a background. In March 2018, we signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD. In April of last year, it came into operation. Unfortunately and significantly, we still have not ratified the optional protocol and therein is a hint of how the Government is dealing with disability in terms of providing ad hocservices or dealing with it as of right and within a rights-based framework. We have not ratified the optional protocol, which would allow people or groups who believe their rights have been violated under the convention to take a case under the UN convention. It is significant that we are one of three countries that have failed to do that.

In respect of the document we have finally ratified after 11 years, Article 19 has been repeatedly mentioned and it is extremely important. Under this article, people with a disability have a right - the word is “right” - to live in the community and have access to a range of in-home and other supports, including personal assistance, which are referred to specifically in section (b). Perhaps the Government might deal with that whenever it responds after tonight’s debate.

Notwithstanding the strength of this article and the wording, there is no legal right to personal assistance in Ireland, which the Minister has acknowledged. Incredibly, there is no standardised procedure or application process, and those in receipt of this support have no security regarding the continuation or the extent of their services due to lack of legislative protection. Unbelievably, the term “personal assistance” is ill-defined and poorly understood. Indeed, the representative from the Disability Federation of Ireland, in her presentation to the Joint Committee on Public Petitions in May of last year, highlighted the difficulties and the challenges associated with the lack of definition and also how it is exhausting for users and advocates of the service to have to continually redefine and explain what constitutes a personal assistance service and the constant conflation of a personal assistance service with home help. Moreover, the Disability Federation of Ireland strongly argued that well resourced, person-centred responsive personal assistance service must be understood as the cornerstone of any community services programme that supports people with disabilities. People with disabilities need the personal assistance service to enable and empower them to continue to live, not just to exist.

As far back as 2002 when Galway passed the Barcelona declaration, after major work on behalf of the disability group, we committed to making Galway universally accessible to all. We made that declaration on the basis of evidence that good design enables and bad design disables. That was a paradigm shift in theory in 2002. It is a work in progress both in terms of serious outstanding accessibility issues in Galway and the failure at national level by successive Governments to embrace the change and roll out appropriate actions in accordance with the new model, a shift that is encapsulated in the convention, which represents, as was mentioned, a paradigm shift from the medical model. It has already been pointed out how the medical model disables and the new model enables.

Independents 4 Change and Deputies Pringle and Broughan, in particular, with the help of the staff in their offices, have brought forward this motion to which we have put our names and fully support. It is a very practical motion. It has been seriously thought out. It is not asking for an awful lot. I wish the Minister of State who left was still here - I am not making an issue of that as I understand he might have had to leave - because the most important thing is that if we roll out a paradigm like this it would save the Government money on an economic level and allow people with disabilities to participate in society, which is their right. If we are going to go to all the trouble of signing and ratifying the UN convention, let us make it a reality. Let us stop the ridiculousness of those two speeches that mean nothing and continue to conflate rights with charity.

See this speech in context