Michael Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak in the debate. I also welcome the Bill before the House. It is not before time. I know there has been a significant effort and work put in to bring the Bill to the House. It is a very important part of the programme for Government. The Minister of State with responsibility for disability, Deputy Rabbitte, has taken on the role with great energy, dedication and hard work. I acknowledge that and I have seen it at first hand at a constituency level. Her engagement with the Joint Committee on Disability Matters has shown that she is completely on top of the challenges that lie ahead, which are many, in the disability sector.

The Bill concerns the movement of issues relating to disability from the Department of Health to the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. It is right to do that. The disability sector has been part of the Department of Health for some time, but it could be said it has been the Cinderella of the Department. We must accept that. In any debate on the Bill, we must accept the significant challenges that exist across the spectrum. I intend to deal with some of the issues today. I will start with the younger cohort of people. When an issue arises, parents look for an assessment of need and a diagnosis and subsequently therapies. There is a significant challenge in terms of the availability of therapies in the public sector. In most cases, they are non-existent. We must accept that service provision is currently that poor. We must look at the challenges people face daily. The challenges faced by parents include the cost, as outlined in the cost of disability report. They must scrape together the money to provide occupational therapy and speech and language therapy for their children to give them the best possible outlook because they are not available on the public health system. We must accept that right here and now. We must look at the availability of therapists and how we are going to encourage and recruit more therapists into the system and ensure that a framework is built around therapists who are at the coalface. We must ensure they are doing the job they are employed to do in the first instance and that therapies are being provided to children and young people.

Like every other Member of the House, I have parents contacting me who are trying to get assessments of need for a whole variety of reasons. We must ensure special needs assistants, SNAs, are in place in primary and secondary schools. There are challenges getting SNAs even when it is obvious that children have additional needs. Schools have sought exceptional reviews on a number of occasions, but the Department comes back and says they never applied at all. We must examine whether the portal is fit for purpose. I am aware of a school where the staff are very dedicated and hardworking and are trying to do the best for children in all circumstances but they got a kick from the Department of Education. I know we are talking about disabilities and health funding, but it is about people with disabilities and those with exceptional needs and additional needs. It is quite clear that the school has made the application and the courteous response from the Department would be to acknowledge that and to say it has not acted upon it and to do so immediately rather than giving a ham-fisted or ridiculous excuse. Those are the challenges out there.

People with lived experience of disabilities, especially parents, have spent their lives fighting the system in every way, shape and form to try to make sure their relatives have the best possible outcome. We meet them on a weekly basis in the Joint Committee on Disability Matters. Parents come in and talk about the battles they have fought for 40 or 50 years. We can see their commitment. In so doing, they have made it better for others, but it is not their responsibility to be constantly fighting; the State and the Departments must be there, ahead of the curve. They must understand. They have a pile of research, and they must be ahead of the curve and make sure that disabilities are being addressed and that there is a response when help is needed by the most vulnerable in the State.

Section 39 organisations have been the backbone of the disability delivery services throughout the country in the past 50 to 60 years, since the late 1960s. They have had an ethos and have worked on a voluntary basis, with boards in place, and were embedded in every community trying to raise funds. The HSE has undermined the section 39 organisations. I do not know why that is because the HSE has done nothing to show it is better in any way, shape or form, or that it has a better offer or agenda than the section 39 organisations. We need to empower the section 39 organisations and stop challenging them and looking for efficiencies and suchlike, as has been going on for a decade. A lot of the organisations were putting in money at the front for therapies for the people they represent. We need to empower them rather than challenge them so that they can be the vehicle for the State in making sure we have a better service.

On transport, the Departments will come back to say that transport is a huge cost, particularly for the Department of Education, given the challenges that are there. Many of the schools dealing with the Department will talk of a broken system and there are cases going to the High Court that should never be seen in the High Court. I welcome the Bill and I know the Minister of State has huge energy and is fighting as hard as she can, and I applaud her for what she is doing and how she is applying herself to the job. However, this is step one in trying to make sure that, in the years to come, we can say this was a major policy decision to move it from the Department of Health to the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, and that then saw a sea change in care by the State of people with disabilities into the future. This has to be seen as step one of a massive volume of work that needs to be done by all of us to have a better system in place.

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