Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Cairns and the Social Democrats for tabling this timely and important motion. I also welcome our visitors in the Gallery for this debate.

In the last few days, when I became aware of this motion being brought forward and after engaging with groups I have been speaking with for many months, I asked them what areas they would like me to focus on in my contribution. The response was the disability capacity review and the action plan therein, as well as the section 39 workers in the area. We fully support the cost of disability requests in the motion. The argument for them is unanswerable, and I will not repeat what has been said previously.

I will focus on the disability capacity review action plan and the residential supports therein. What is galling everybody about this and the lack of progress on an action plan is that the disability capacity review was not put together by organisations represented in the Gallery or by Sinn Féin, the Social Democrats, the Labour Party or some independent group. This report is the Government's report. It was published nearly a year ago; we are nine days shy of the first year anniversary of when it was published. We were supposed to have an action plan by the end of 2021. There was an announcement in April that a plan would be published but, nigh on a year later, it has not been published. The figures in the capacity review are massive and they are not being contested. Nobody here or in the Gallery is contesting the figures. They are huge. The figures for unmet need are through the roof across the range of services - residential services, day services, PA home help, therapies, respite care and community services.

The lack of an action plan being published, debated and, most importantly, being delivered is a source of unbelievable frustration and increasing anger, particularly now as we are again in the midst of a cramped and crowded Dáil schedule as we hurtle towards another Dáil recess. Even if this is published within the next nine days, the Dáil will go into recess. It will be back in September and then we will have a budget that is being brought forward to 27 September, which means that it will be cramped to have time to debate it then. Time for much-needed debate on this is eking away. In fact, this two-hour debate is the most time we will get to spend debating this issue between now and the recess and probably before the next budget, which is why this is so important.

With regard to the budget, and I ask the Minister of State to hear this loud and clear, can it be an accessible budget announcement for people with disabilities, so individuals with disabilities, their supporters and the groups can understand how many existing and new supports, be they residential, day places or respite supports, will be provided in budget 2023? Do not bamboozle us on the day with grand announcements on workers, therapists and places and not make it clear in the announcements what are existing and what are new. Most importantly, the Government has to tell us how it is going to deliver them. It is no use saying the Government is going to allocate €500 million for 200 residential supports or X amount of therapies when we know the workers are not there. Let this budget be a new departure in terms of how it is announced, how it is published and how it is discussed. None of us, whether we are in the Chamber, in the Gallery or at a work desk at home, wants to be scrambling around amidst a very deliberate forest of misinformation.

I would like to see something clear regarding residential supports within the action plan. In its submission to the Department on this, the National Federation of Voluntary Service Providers has set out clearly what needs to be done and what recommendations should be included in the action plan. Last Friday, I visited an Irish Wheelchair Association day service in Balbriggan. A young man there, Conor Dillon, just before we had our conversation, wanted to know about his long-term housing needs. As a man and a human being he needs to know, but he does not know what is going to happen when his parents pass away. He is young and his parents are still relatively young, but that is what he is thinking about now. As I said, we had not even settled into the discussion we were about to have, which was the most powerful two hours I have ever spent in the company of any other human being. I was with Conor, Naomi and Louis that day. We cannot articulate any louder or clearer the need for the action plan to be published. The Minister of State knows the groups and the individuals that have to be consulted on this, who will be able to talk to the many disabled people and their family support networks. They need the information from the Minister of State as soon as possible.

Yesterday, workers in the Irish Wheelchair Association were out on strike. It is a section 39 organisation. This is going to be the start of what I believe will be a summer, autumn, winter and beyond of discontent if the Government and the HSE do not take real control of this. These are the Minister of State's workers in every meaningful way. When someone presents to the State as a disabled person and says he or she needs assistance, respite care, a day service, a night service or a therapy, the State goes to these companies or organisations. The State cannot provide the services through the HSE service so it asks them to provide them, and they step in with their workers, who are on brutal pay and brutal conditions. The organisations are unable to keep staff. The staff are going to the HSE. The HSE is then unable to keep staff because the staff are either going to private healthcare providers, who, by the way, are coming around back into the sector to provide services because of the emergency element to the care that is provided, or they are going abroad to work elsewhere or they are going to other sectors. We are losing staff everywhere.

The Minister of State cannot wash her hands of this. These are her workers, except when it comes to pay and conditions. That is when the Government says "No" and that it is down to the organisations themselves. When I met Prosper Fingal this week with Deputy Bacik, that was its ask, as well as the disability capacity review. This organisation is just one provider of disability services for intellectual disability in my constituency. It is struggling to get much-needed workers and struggling to retain them. This is a blue ribbon organisation, one of many that exist throughout this country. If it or the Irish Wheelchair Association or the other organisations did not exist tomorrow, our health service, which is already in crisis, would absolutely flounder on the floor, and the people who would suffer are disabled people and their families and support networks. The Minister of State and everybody here know this, yet we remain without an action plan and we retain a hands-off approach to sections 38 and 39 organisations. In a cost-of-living crisis and in every other crisis, we are happy to allow them to flounder and struggle in an environment that is absolutely crippling them. It has to stop.

See this speech in context