Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move:

That Dáil Éireann shall take note of the Report of the Joint Committee on Disability Matters entitled ‘Aligning Disability Funding with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Budget 2022 Pre-Budget Submission’ on 7th July, 2021 and, in particular, note the recommendations in relation to urgent publication of key reports commissioned and concluded but not yet published.

The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Disability Matters prepared a report entitled Aligning Disability Funding with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: Budget 2022 Pre-Budget Submission, which was laid before the Houses in July 2021. The committee did this because its members had come to realise that disabled people continue to be institutionalised, segregated and left behind in society across all sectors. The situation in Ireland is stark. Data on poverty and employment rates identify Ireland as the worst country in western Europe in which to be a disabled person. Currently, the rate of poverty and social exclusion for disabled persons in Ireland is one of the highest in the EU at 38.1% and EU figures show Ireland to be the country with the lowest employment rate of disabled persons, at 32.3%. The poverty rate for disabled persons was exacerbated by the 2008 financial and economic crisis and the subsequent response of austerity, as the consistent poverty rate for disabled persons increased from 9% in 2009 to 24% in 2017. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD, is a landmark convention which seeks to reverse these trends and ensure that disabled persons can enjoy the same human rights as everyone else by integrating disabled persons back into our societies, communities and economies.

The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Disability Matters, which was set up to consider all disability matters, including monitoring the implementation by Ireland of the UNCRPD, uses the UN convention as a benchmark and works to integrate disabled persons into our society, community and economy. The committee believes that the voice that disabled persons have actively taken under the UNCRPD must continue to influence and inform policy and be heard by all sectors of society. This is crucial in a society that has marginalised and excluded disabled people throughout time and history. The committee's report, Aligning Disability Funding with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: Budget 2022 Pre-Budget Submission, is informed by the lived experience and analysis of those who made submissions to the committee and those from whom members hear daily and directly in their constituencies. It sought to align disability funding with the objectives of the UNCRPD.

In terms of equality budgeting and the well-being framework in budget 2022, the committee believes that universal design thinking as an approach for economic recovery has greater potential benefits given that it benefits a range of groups including disability groups. This will be especially important in the context of the growth in our ageing population and the longer-term challenges for that group. The committee is very concerned by the level of unmet need in the disability sector, which has not been addressed in budgetary allocations. It is also concerned by the delay in publishing the disability capacity review and by the fact that the Indecon cost of disability report, which examines the cost of disability in Ireland, has not yet been published and therefore did not inform the budget 2022 process. The committee is also concerned that the lack of data across all disability groups further ensures that the level of unmet need cannot be addressed effectively in budgetary allocations. I refer here to the lack of data on personal assistant needs, wheelchair users requiring fully accessible houses, the uptake of health screening among women with disabilities, and on stroke survivors living in Ireland, to name but a few. To improve this, as highlighted in the committee's pre-budget submission, an immediate allocation of funding for improved data collection and disaggregation is required.

In its pre-budget submission, the committee also recommends that additional funding is made available for additional respite facilities and respite nights to meet the demand and growing waiting lists for respite services. The committee recognises that respite services are crucial in addressing the impact of the loss of services during the Covid-19 pandemic and in providing a quality of life for disabled persons and their carers. The committee notes the confirmation from the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, that an additional €9 million will be provided in 2021 to further build the capacity of our respite services in each community healthcare organisation, CHO, for children and adults, as well as providing alternative models of respite care. I ask the Minister of State to outline how many new respite facilities have opened so far and to provide an update on the situation.

The committee recommended that additional funding for housing adaptation be provided and notes that funding for housing adaptation grants rose to €60 million, an increase of €5 million on last year's allocation. However, the committee is concerned that this additional funding may not reflect current increases in building costs. This is a short-term solution but the long-term solution is to ensure a sufficient supply of adaptable or fully accessible houses in Ireland, as this would eliminate the need for so many people to apply for adaptation grants. In this regard, the committee recommended in its pre-budget submission the introduction of national targets to ensure that new housing is increasingly accessible or adaptable for disabled persons along with the specification of a minimum requirement for the provision of universally designed housing units and additional funding for housing adaptation grants.

The committee notes the Minister of State's announcement regarding increases in personal assistance hours. An additional 100,000 personal assistance hours will be provided next year, as well as an additional 30,000 home support hours to support people to live self-directed lives. However, the committee believes that more is needed because, as highlighted in the disability capacity review, the need for personal assistance services has not been quantified. In this regard, the committee believes that devolved budgets for personal assistance is a transformative intervention to align disability services with the UNCRPD. It recommends that the personalised budgets demonstration project is funded to ensure the timely development of a national service framework for personalised budgets, along with appropriate funding of a standardised nationalised personal assistance system in keeping with Article 19 of the UNCRPD.

The committee recommends that the progressing disability services model is fully funded and that dedicated funding streams are introduced to quickly build the capacity of the new children's disability network teams on time and on target. The committee notes the provision of €8.2 million for the recruitment of therapists and administrative support to the newly established 91 children's disability network teams announced in budget 2022.

The investment in delivering Progressing Disability Services for children and young people, which will increase therapeutic staff under the newly established children's disability network team model will, I hope, reduce waiting lists for access to assessment of need and increase access to timely, early intervention services. We did, however, listen with alarm to the Minister's recent statement acknowledging that a backlog of approximately 4,000 has now developed for the assessment of need waiting list, which not long ago was reported to have been dramatically reduced.

The committee also believes that ratification of the optional protocol to the UNCRPD must be urgently undertaken to ensure that the voice that disabled people have actively taken under the convention, which all sectors of society need to hear, is not be silenced by Ireland not ratifying it. The mechanisms for delivery of the optional protocol must also be funded under budgetary allocations.

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