Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

This country treats disabled people shamefully. Disabled children and their families must battle from the day they are born. It is outrageous that their biggest battle is often with the State to try to get basic services, like an assessment of need, essential therapies or a school place. More than 17,000 children are now waiting to access children's disability network teams, CDNTs. More than 10,000 of them have been waiting for more than a year, with no intervention and no therapy. This wholesale and pervasive State neglect has disastrous and lifelong consequences.

Children have a small and critical window in which to get essential therapies. If they do not, their development will be limited and they will be prevented from reaching their full potential. Often, when children turn 18, whatever meagre supports that do exist then disappear. What remains is fragmented and threadbare. Disabled adults used to have access to supports for personal transport, but ten years ago these schemes were dismantled by the then Fine Gael and Labour Party Government. A decade later, there is still no proper replacement scheme. Transport is about access to education, securing employment or just being able to meet with family and friends. Above all, it means being able to live independently. All of this is being denied to disabled people by a contemptuous and cruel State.

What is the answer of the Tánaiste's Government to this? It wants to demonise and divide disabled people. Under new plans, disabled people will be subjected to medical assessment and categorised into three tiers. This proposal is a carbon copy of a system introduced in the UK under austerity in 2008. It is a discredited policy that led to a disabled man, Errol Graham, a 57-year-old grandfather, starving to death after his out-of-work and housing benefits were stopped. His emaciated body, of just 4.5 stones, was discovered by the bailiffs sent in to evict him. Is this really the model this country wants to emulate?

Yesterday, the Taoiseach seemed to indicate it was. He cited "Benefits Street", a UK television show, that vilified working-class people as a relevant reference point on this topic. The Minister for Social Protection has said she wants to reform the system because disabled people have high levels of poverty and low levels of employment. Does she not think that maybe, just maybe, the State's abject failure to provide vital services, be they medical, educational or transportational, has something to do with this situation? Does the Tánaiste agree with the Taoiseach's view that "Benefits Street" is relevant to the rationale for this reform? Does he also agree with the segregation of disabled people following medical assessment into three separate tiers?

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