Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for being in the Chamber. I have been watching the debate from my office and, as always, she has been engaging and has not just been sitting on the front benches playing on a phone. She is taking notes. She is surrounded by a great team, including Mr. Noel Byrne, and its members are always good in taking on issues when I contact them.

The topic of special needs is close to my heart. When I come home from the Dáil, there is someone at home close to me who has special needs. It is a part of my life and is why I went into teaching. It is probably why I entered politics in 2004, fighting for and championing the underdog. It is a cause that the Minister of State shares.

This is positive legislation, the genesis of which is the 2015 Act, which was also positive legislation. I watched that legislation's passage from outside Leinster House many years ago. This amending Bill gives it new effect, ties up certain elements and is more moderate and reflective.

The Bill contains a number of critical provisions, one being the ending of the outdated wardship system, which I believe dates back to the late 1800s. It is great to see it being dismantled in 2022 and replaced with a far more modern framework, one that helps vulnerable people like my family member and others to make assisted decisions, with the correct supports in place. This legislation recognises them for the adults they are. Sometimes, people cast them aside and dismiss them as being "childlike", a term that I hate. These are people who are adults in mind and body even if how they function from day to day is a little different and more challenging than it is for the rest of us, and they need their rights enshrined in legislation if their futures are to be protected. Some 200,000 people have issues relating to capacity. They are the ones far beyond these walls who will benefit from the legislation when it is tweaked, finely tuned and enacted.

I wish to pay tribute to an amazing advocacy group in County Clare. The Minister of State has met it several times, namely, the Clare Leader Forum. All of us have had lobby groups at our doors, but this is a group that calls politicians every few weeks and hauls us in. If we have anything else scheduled, we must scratch it off our agenda and meet this group. It keeps us razor sharp on all of the relevant issues. I wish to name some of its members on the record – Ms Anne-Marie Flanagan, Mr. Martin Tobin, Mr. Dermot Hayes, Ms Jennifer Hynes and Mr. Liam Mulcahy. There are many others. They looked the Minister of State in the white of her eyes a few months ago and told her that they wanted the UNCRPD, up to and including Article 12, to be fully enacted and provided for within Irish legislation. This Bill does that.

I am happy to see the doubling in the number of people with disabilities working in the public sector. I have worn a path to EmployAbility Clare. It is an amazing and fantastic body, but we need to focus on what happens beyond its office. I do not know whether many employers listen to Dáil debates – I am sure they have better things to be doing at 3.55 p.m. on a Wednesday than listening to what we say in the Chamber – but if a message were to come out of this debate, it would be that they should look at employing people with disabilities. A disability or limited capacity is only one aspect of a person's being. The people I know, and the people I taught in my classrooms for many years, have strengths and would be an asset to any workplace. We should not need laws to require people to take on such persons.

The Leas-Cheann Comhairle is present. She always gives a little bit of latitude in these discussions. I need to mention the Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs Act 2004, or EPSEN Act, which is relevant to the Minister of State's Ministry to some degree even though it is in the realm of education. It was critical legislation. When I was at Mary Immaculate College preparing to be a teacher, the Act was hammered home to us time and again. Its backbone is the premise that a child with special educational needs would be schooled in his or her home mainstream environment. It might not have mattered too much to the teacher – it was just another person in the class and we had to change how we taught a little by differentiating – but it made such a difference when the school bell rang in the evening because that child would be invited to a local party or go on a play date. These children were growing up with their peer groups, not being sent to special needs schools far removed from them. I am not saying that there is anything wrong with special needs schools. I have a family member who attended one and thrived. Instead, I am saying that too many children in the 1980s and 1990s when I was growing up got to seven or eight years of age and their needs could not be appropriately provided for in their local mainstream schools, so they went to fabulous special needs schools. The EPSEN Act transformed everything. It may be 18 years old, but it is still current and is still empowering for people, particularly youngsters who are struggling in school.

I was dismayed to hear that there were talks of providing clustered centres for children with special educational needs in Dublin. Dublin is far removed from me - it is 120 miles away and getting here takes me two and a half hours - but the spirit of what has been suggested for Dublin is all wrong. The EPSEN Act might be 18 years old, but it provides for youngsters to be educated in their local schools with their local peers and to be invited to birthday parties and play dates. That is what we want. That is where children thrive. Not everything is learned in a textbook. Not everything is learned by the teacher explaining for the 20th time how the number is carried when subtracting. Not everything is learned in that environment. Most learning is done in the schoolyard with a peer group. If we start shipping youngsters with special educational needs back out to clustered centres of education, we will lose everything that the EPSEN Act gave us. I know that this is not directly under the Minister of State's remit, but she is the Minister of State with responsibility for disability. She is a champion for people with disabilities and capacity issues. There is a realm of politically correct terms, and they are all such good terms. I ask the Minister of State to fight in government to ensure that we do not return to clustered environments.

If we have specialised schools they are there for a reason. They are there because they are bespoke and meet needs but let us not get back into clustered settings. A youngster in Meelick National School or Parteen National School starting off primary education, with whatever challenges and difficulties they have, should be able to progress in that pathway right the way through primary and secondary level. Let us not regress. Overall this is fantastic legislation. I know there will be amendments, some of which I have read. They are made with good spirit and are guided by the right principles. Let us enact this legislation and give people the power to make their own decisions.

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