Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Tully for tabling this motion. I understand she is deputy Chair of the Joint Committee on Disability Matters, which made a pre-budget submission. I will draw all our attention to that because in its short introduction the committee calls for - this is a cross-party committee with everybody represented - the urgent ratification of the optional protocol as Ireland is one of the last countries to do so. We are an outlier. The Government likes to use the word "outlier" in relation to many things and we are clearly an outlier. This cross-party committee's submission goes on to say:

... the delay in ratifying the OP [optional protocol] represents an instance of structural violence where the lack of implementation of a complaint's mechanism and subsequent accountability, harms people with disabilities by preventing them from meeting their basic rights under the Convention.

This is a cross-party submission and includes 68 recommendations. It is about aligning the Government's programme with our obligations under that convention.

I call for the immediate publication of the disability action plan, as does this motion. I looked to see whether it had been published and I found another document. I am swimming in documentation and yet only have a small selection of what has been published on transforming the lives of people with disabilities. We are still waiting for that transformation but what has been transformed is language itself. We are no longer talking about the urgency of the provision of services but about gradually progressing. We are not talking about provision but about progression. We have certainly had a transformation but not in respect of services.

There is then insult upon insult. We have a report on the public consultation on the disability action plan. Can the Minister imagine more public consultation? This report mentions "a wide range of priorities" and "the need to root disability support services in the philosophy and rights set out in the" UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which we keep failing to do. In my few minutes, I will just go back through report after report. I will go back ten years. Back in 2012, we had a report entitled Value for Money and Policy Review of Disability Services in Ireland. In 2014 we had the Transforming Lives programme, which is beautiful wording. This was described as "a national collaborative effort to build better services for people with disabilities". In the interest of not boring the Minister, I will skip a few and move to 2018 and a report on the future needs for disability services. In 2021, we had the Indecon review, which was absolutely damning in its findings, was it not? It was a disability capacity review. In the few minutes available, I will not go into everything but it states that the Health Service Executive "estimates there may be 600 people with no day service who need one" and that there is also "unmet need for those getting partial day services, which is estimated would be equivalent to an extra 600 full-time day places". There has been no action on that. It is another report.

To put this in context, people with a disability are more than twice as likely to experience poverty and deprivation, as has been said by everybody. One tires of saying this so I cannot imagine what it is like for people with disabilities who have been up in that Gallery listening to us talking about it. The Minister talked about us signing and ratifying the protocol. I will tell him how long that took. We signed it in 2007 but it took us to 2018 to ratify it. Unless the Minister is going to tell us tonight, God knows when we are going to sign the optional protocol so that it means something. In the meantime, we have failed to bring in a cost-of-living payment. Of course, I recognise there were good things in the budget including once-off payments but it gets to the point where that is insulting because it goes against the very core of what people are asking for.

There is a lot more I would like to say but I will finish, in my last 40 seconds, by mentioning someone who happens to be a neighbour of mine but who is also an author who has won many awards, Christian O'Reilly, author of No Magic Pill. At the centre of this play are people with disabilities. They are the main actors and actresses. They play to full houses and standing ovations in the Black Box Theatre in Galway and in the Civic Theatre in Tallaght. The play should be in the Abbey Theatre, our national theatre, because it puts people with disabilities exactly where they want to be. I recommend the play, No Magic Pill, in which people with disabilities are treated with respect and dignity. We should design our buildings to universal design standards.

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