Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I warmly welcome the publication of this Bill, which marks a significant milestone in the transfer of specialist community-based disability services from the Department of Health to my own Department. This transfer is an important step towards achieving a more equal Irish society and towards honouring the human rights of all people in Ireland, including people with disabilities.

I look forward to working closely with the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, on this new and important area of responsibility. Equally, I will continue to engage with the Minister for Health, Deputy Donnelly, to ensure integrated policymaking and governance of the HSE. While my Department will be responsible for approximately 56,000 specialist community-based disability service users, the Minister for Health will remain responsible for a range of mainstream services that are used by more than 600,000 people who have disabilities. Both Departments are united in our commitment to ensuring people with disabilities continue to access health and social care services from the HSE in a seamless manner, regardless of which Department has policy responsibility. This Bill provides a strong basis for ongoing co-operation and collaboration in this regard.

As the Bill moves through the Houses, it is important to recall the intended purpose and the benefit of this transfer. My Department will have responsibility for specialist community-based disability services, which provide some for some of the most complex health and social care needs of people with disabilities. This will obviously be in addition to our current remit for disability equality policy, which transferred from the Department of Justice in late 2020.

The consolidation of these features into one Department presents a significant opportunity to improve the lives of people with disabilities in Ireland. The transfer will facilitate the transition from what is sometimes, as many Deputies here have described it, a more medical mode of support, towards an holistic, rights-based approach that supports people with disabilities to live autonomously. It will support the HSE to continue to develop a more person-centred service. This evolution philosophy is crucial for Ireland to meet the obligations to which we signed up in recent years when we signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD. That document provides a blueprint for strengthening the rights of people with disabilities and promoting their inclusion in all aspects of society.

The Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, and I are committed to delivering real and tangible benefits for service users throughout the country. A number of Deputies have spoken about the UNCRPD and particularly about the optional protocol. The Minister of State and I have been clear that we want to see Ireland sign up to the optional protocol. Key to doing that and to bringing about the legal changes, because we need to change our existing legal regime to bring us into compliance with that, is the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) (Amendment) Bill, legislation that is overdue. Everyone accepts that is overdue, but it is now at pre-legislative scrutiny, PLS. It is before the Oireachtas joint committee on children. The Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, and I are eager for that to be examined quickly. We want to have that in place by June 2022 for the decision supports service, which is a vital new service that will replace wardship. Wardship is a very outdated approach to dealing with the decision-making rules and capacity of persons with disabilities, particularly those with intellectual disabilities. That needs to be replaced. We have this system and we just need to get that Bill through PLS quickly so that we can get it into the Houses and get it passed.

Returning to this Bill and to the transfer of functions, the HSE will obviously be a key partner in this regard. I have been in contact with the chair of the HSE board to express my commitment, as a Minister who now has an accountability relationship with the HSE board, to talk about working closely with the HSE to support this delivery of enhanced services for people with disabilities.

My officials meet regularly with HSE senior management in preparation for the transfer, and the Secretary General of my Department will soon be meeting with the CEO of the HSE to advance these arrangements further.

This Bill brings us one step closer to centralising the equality, health and social care dimensions of support for people with disabilities within my Department. This will place us in a strong position to lead efforts to improve the lives of people with disabilities in Ireland. Deputy Duncan Smith said this Bill can have a real impact. We want it to have a real impact. We want this to be a fundamental change in how Ireland approaches the holistic rights of persons with disabilities. The Deputy rightly pointed out there is a large range of responsibilities within my Department, but we also have to accept there is a huge range of responsibilities within the Department of Health and it has a huge budget. It was identified during the programme for Government negotiations, primarily by the Taoiseach, that disability was an issue that needed more attention. That is what we are seeking to give it, while also bringing the various elements together within one Department.

On the budgetary arrangements, funding for community-based disability services will be sought by me or successive Ministers in my Department and the budgetary line will be through Vote 40 within my Department. That Vote is going to transfer over. Good co-operation between me, the Minister for Health and the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, has already been demonstrated by the very successful budgetary allocations Deputy Rabbitte has achieved in both of the previous two budgets. On both occasions there was a significant increase in financial support for community-based disability services.

There is a huge amount more to be done. None of us is under any illusion about the scale of the work that has to be done to provide community-based disability services, to provide more therapists, to continue to reduce the waiting lists and to implement the huge number of legal changes required. We also need to integrate those changes with transport and social welfare. The work the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, has done over the past 18 months in putting a focus on these issues is recognised across this House and across the sector. I look forward to her area of responsibility fully transferring to my Department and us jointly working to continue to advance this issue. There is a huge amount to do here. We are absolutely cognisant of that and that work will continue when there are other Ministers in this role. This Bill is a very important first step towards delivering that better, human rights-based focus and integrated services for persons with disabilities in our country.

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