Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute. I acknowledge the presence of both my colleagues from Galway, the Minister of State, Deputy Anne Rabbitte, and the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman.

When this committee was set up, I volunteered for it for the simple reason that I spent five years representing a constituency and have been experiencing and seeing all through my life the lived experience of people with disabilities. I thought it was an ideal opportunity, but what really engaged me was the fact that everybody on the committee worked so hard together. I want to thank everybody, led by our Chair, Deputy Michael Moynihan, who is not here. So far, it has been a great experience.

For me, it has been a listening experience. I have spent most of my time listening to people with their expert advice from the lived experience of people with disabilities. To recap, there are the persons with the disability who, when they get married, are penalised because their income is assessed jointly with their wife's and they lose their disability allowance or disability benefit, and they becomes demoralised. They still cannot work. It is a great story until they get married. There are also the amputees who have an income and are not automatically entitled to a medical card. We saw this eloquently being discussed by Councillor Gabe Cronnelly, from the Minister of State's and my constituency, who is an amputee. To replace his prosthesis will cost €20,000. That is his money. Because he is a county councillor and he is getting an income from it, and his wife works as a nurse, he is being penalised.

Councillor Cronnelly spoke also about the fact that he is a public representative, and we need to have more public representatives from among those with disabilities. There are 643,000 people in this country who have a disability and, therefore, we should have more people on local authorities or in this House telling us what it is all about and how they are living.

Another issue that is close to my heart is the housing adaptation grant. When people are being assessed for the grant, the income of the entire household is taken into account. It is wrong because the person then probably will not get the grant. The entire family are there and they are blaming themselves for the fact that they are living in the house. Maybe they are siblings or maybe it is a husband or wife who is working. All of that is wrong.

That leads to the other issue of children who are blind since birth and who have been refused the primary medical certificate. Every time their parents go to look for something, they have to go back and prove, with a consultant's report, that the child is blind. The child is blind since birth. He or she then goes to secondary school, and that is it. It is the same with Councillor Gabe Cronnelly. He said that every time he looks for something, he has to tell people and get updated reports stating that he is still an amputee. As he stated quite candidly to us, his leg is not going to grow back. Members can also imagine the frustration for parents.

The other issue I have come across is where someone has a child who went for an operation last week. The operation was to be cancelled at the last minute because there were no paediatric nurses available to care for him in the hospital afterwards. Luckily, we got the operation back on stream but then there were not enough paediatric nurses to care for him at home for four nights. This type of thing has got to stop. When I say it has got to stop, we have to make it stop. I am not saying the Minister has to make it stop. We have to make this stop because we are the legislators. This is what we come back to - the UNCRPD. It is a landmark convention but it simply states that we seek to ensure that people with disabilities can enjoy the same human rights as everyone else. If we are true to that, we will initiate the implementation of the protocol.

I note, from the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte's remarks, that she is pleased to confirm that the Minister, Deputy O’Gorman, and herself are open to an earlier ratification, but then she stated, "provided the State is in a position to meet its obligations". We should not have to say that. We should meet our obligations. We should invoke the protocol. We should say, once and for all, that this is it and we will make sure that people with disabilities have a right to take us to court if we do not do what is a human right for them.

There are two other issues. The Indecon cost of disability report has not been published and that needs to be published immediately. I do not know why it has not been published and it needs to be published as a matter of urgency.

The final issue is that we need to see the plan for the €105 million, which I welcome, in the budget this year. I am concerned that it remains unclear where and how this money will be spent.

the Department is drafting a strategy on autism, which is another issue that is close to my heart. We introduced a Bill on autism but what we need to do, rather than having the strategy and leaving it there then, is have the implementation plan for that strategy published with the plan. That is where most strategies fall down when they come from Departments.

We have to work together on this. We have a significant number of challenges. We need to be able to make sure that the money is available, but it is not only one Department that has to make this happen. People were talking about housing. They were talking about roads. They were talking about other issues that are along the way. There has to be an interdepartmental approach to this and we have to make sure that, once and for all, we start making progress on a step-by-step basis. I welcome the opportunity, as a member of the committee, to work with Government to make sure we do this. I will pass over to Deputy Bacik.

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