Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour) | Oireachtas source

We welcome this Bill. I would be interested in hearing from the Minister, Deputy O’Gorman, and from the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, if she is summing up at the end - I am not sure if she will be - because there are concerns when there are such changes. Everyone has said that this is a technical Bill etc., but technical changes can and do have real impacts.

One of our concerns is that the brief of the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth is a big one. While we have an able Minister in that brief, and there is no doubt about that, it is a huge brief and disability is a massive area. We have been discussing disability thus far in this debate through the prism of health because we are separating the functions from the Minister for Health in some areas. However, we are looking as a society to disability-proof transport. We spoke at the transport committee yesterday about our new fleet of buses and trains, access to train stations, and active travel through a disability lens. When we look at housing and we are talking about congregated settings and decongregation, we must make sure there are houses in which people disabilities can live and not just access. That is something I have learned over recent years: the difference between people with disabilities having access to a house and actually having a house or home in which a person with a disability can live. There are also the issues of access to jobs, access to the labour market and implications in that regard, industrial relations matters as they pertain to people with disabilities, and workers in that area, such as section 39 workers. Therefore, this is a massive area of policy for the Minister who has responsibility for disability.

We spoke to the Minister in recent months since I took over the health brief about the disability capacity review, the cost of living for people with a disability, all the waiting lists and the services. These are all massive issues. We can go down the list, which I have here, but we will discuss it again.

In this particular debate, given the content of this Bill, I want to hear what concerns are held on the Government side about how the new system will work? On the HSE side of things, service delivery will be under the responsibility of two Ministers. It will rely on two Ministers, as well as the Minister of State, having good working relationships. Whoever the Ministers are now and whoever the Ministers will be in the future, when it comes to budget time, how will this work? Will the Minister with responsibility for disability have to go cap in hand as a senior Minister to the Minister for Health before going to the Minister for Finance? These are the practical things I would like to hear about. I am not trying to catch anyone out for anything, but I just want to clear on these things. One of the worst things that can happen in any area of public services is siloing, whereby one section, organisation or Department does not talk to another. This is one area where we can have no siloing and where people really have to work together. We are talking about robust communication and reporting mechanisms.

This is a long Bill. The Minister read out many sections. Therefore, this is not a quick technical Bill; it is a detailed technical Bill. To give comfort to those who are at every level of the disability sector, be they service users or service providers, as well as those in the disability sector who are in areas unrelated to the delivery of health, such as in transport or all of the other areas I laid out, it is important to outline how that reporting will work? How will those relationships be managed? How can we ensure we are not taking a couple of steps backwards due to new bureaucracies and that, instead, this will actually help us move forward, cut down the waiting lists and bring a disability focus on policy to all those other areas?

I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say and, indeed, to the summing up at the end of the debate, whenever that may be.

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