Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I have listened to some scepticism regarding the import of the Bill but I am quite hopeful that the transfer of the disability portfolio to the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth will be effective and worthwhile. As we move towards a rights-based approach to addressing the requirements of persons with disabilities and the provision of services around that, this new context for policy and legislation will be quite important. In fairness to the Minister of State, she has an excellent approach to her brief and I can see her working incredibly hard to meet the challenges that the sector faces. I believe that the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, will support her well in that. Deputy Canney mentioned the Joint Committee on Disability Matters, which is tasked with overseeing the UNCRPD, can assist the Minister of State in this. I have learned in the few years that I have been here that there genuinely is a cohort of Oireachtas Members who are totally committed to the issue. I can reflect on Deputy Canney's feeling of inadequacy when hearing of the lived experience of people but that is not down to a lack of commitment because there is serious commitment from Members on both sides of the House.

However, I take the opportunity to situate the policy work we have to do in the next few years in the lived experience of persons with disabilities and their families. Especially as we are moving to this new context, we should be thinking of it in the context of financial independence and inclusion for those with disabilities.

We have heard lots of numbers this afternoon, but the Central Statistics Office, CSO, figures from 2017 suggest there are more than 130,000 persons with disabilities who are living in danger of consistent poverty. In the past two years, Covid-19 has had a specific effect on persons with disabilities. It has been incredibly hard on some people, and we must factor that into our plans for the next few years. We could also see Covid-19 as an opportunity to put persons with disabilities and their rights at the very centre of action and direct funding to support accessible and inclusive communities. We have all realised in the past two years how much we rely on our communities. It is important measures are strengthened to support persons with disabilities to transition out of and prevent them from falling into poverty. I am saying that with particular reference to the level of inflation we are seeing at the moment. Levels of poverty inevitably interact with other components of our family and community life. We know only 30% of persons with disabilities are in paid work, and for persons with visual impairment it is only 24%. In general, our numbers of persons in employment from the disability community are around 20% lower than the EU average. That is a stark number.

We know persons with disability consistently struggle to find suitable and secure housing and some people wait for five to ten years for State-provided housing. The housing situation for persons with disabilities is of course just a crisis within a crisis, that being the broader housing crisis, but it demonstrates a housing sector that is not really working for persons with disabilities. There are huge levels of uncaptured need on top of this because there are many young persons with disabilities who are living with parents, who would not necessarily be captured within those numbers, who have no prospect of moving out and living independently or who are living with elderly carers. A core problem there is access to the HSE support package.

I could continue highlighting those issues through education, health and mental health. As we are doing this changeover, it is important to recognise the history of persons with disabilities in this State has been one of poverty and social exclusion. That is a legacy that is very important for us as parliamentarians and especially parliamentarians on the Government side to recognise. On average, as other Deputies have said, other EU countries spend about 2% of their GDP on social protection for disability and Ireland has in the past spent far less than this. The disability capacity review gives some indication of the level of investment that will be required, and those numbers are considerable. To make the changes we need for persons with disabilities, we will not only need to be ambitious but also very diligent and comprehensive. I welcome the proposed Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) (Amendment) Bill 2021, which would include measures to further realise the UNCRPD in Ireland, including, and very importantly, legislating for the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission to be a national monitoring body for the convention. That is an important move. We are going to need serious oversight to keep ourselves honest because it is incredibly complex and sits across several Departments.

Returning to the idea of seeing through the lens of disability, poverty is a relentless and hungry opponent for many people. It can steal their energy, ambition, hope and make every task, every goal and every day feel like a Herculean undertaking. It is the mandate of this Government and of everybody in the House, because so many people care genuinely about this, to ease that burden for persons with disabilities. The short version of what I wanted to flag in this debate is I am asking that this change be a kind of mandate to reach out, not just to the various representative groups of persons with disabilities, the service providers and the individuals themselves who experience disability but for us in this House to reach out to Departments.

Issues around disability reside in the Department with responsibility for housing, and here I reference the Irish Wheelchair Association's call for a change to building regulations and access. They reside in the Department of Social Protection, as with what we just heard from Deputy Canney about the request for the €20 recognition of poverty payment, which has been highlighted by the Disability Federation of Ireland. The issues reside in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, where there is a need for equality budgeting and well-being indicators that would be so important for persons with disabilities as a means of going beyond the traditional metrics of GDP. It would be a way of measuring progress and assisting in reducing poverty and strengthening economic and social rights for marginalised groups, of which persons with disabilities are one. It must also reside in the Department of the Taoiseach, where major nation-building decisions are made, such as the creation of the national development plan, on which the Committee on Disability Matters made a submission. In addition there is the Department with responsibility for employment which has a role when we talk about sections 38 and 39 organisations.

I can think of few parliamentarians better suited to the task of reaching out beyond the boundaries of their brief and making their influence felt in all sorts of decisions from other Departments than the Minister of State. I wish her well and look forward to supporting her in that.

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