Mark Ward (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I want to start by talking about the cost of disability. Enormous extra expenses are faced by people with disabilities that are not covered by social welfare payments. Not all people with disabilities are on social welfare. Many people with disabilities work. People with disabilities are often at a higher risk of poverty.

I can testify, as a person and a worker with a disability who has lived experience, that many of the barriers one faces as a person with a disability are really challenging. The marginal increases for disabled people introduced in budget 2022 were wiped out this year by inflation. Additional expenses for living with a disability are not recognised by the State, which means that people with disabilities are often caught in a poverty trap.

The lack of public services for children with disabilities also pushes people into poverty. In my area in Dublin Mid-West, there are significant waiting lists for children trying to get occupational therapy, speech and language therapy, psychology and dietetics. We heard from the Quarryvale Family Resource Centre at the Joint Committee on Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, which operates a food bank in my area. We were told about parents accessing the food bank because they are paying privately for services that the State should be providing for their children. That is not acceptable.

Budget 2023 failed to resource and fund disability support services. Sinn Féin outlined a funding strategy to meet the needs of people with disabilities in our alternative budget, not just for next year but right up to 2032. This would allow disability groups to plan ahead strategically and people with disabilities could feel assured of the services. We cannot put a price on that. Sinn Féin would have invested an additional €153 million in disability services compared with the Government's paltry €29 million. Early intervention is key. We have an unacceptable situation in Dublin Mid-West whereby there are not any public health nurses to carry out developmental checks on infants. We will see more children falling through the cracks if issues are not spotted earlier.

In the brief time remaining I also wish to mention the Clondalkin Autism Parents Support Network, which is campaigning and fighting for basic school supports for their children. These parents are exhausted from fighting a system that is betraying their children and preventing them reaching their full potential. They should not have to fight but fight they must. They must fight until there is a complete overhaul of the system and also of the current Government.

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