Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Sinn Féin for bringing forward this important motion. When I read the budget, I thought there would be more money in it for disabilities. When I saw the Minister of State's announcement on the same evening, I thought there was something else in the budget that we missed. Unfortunately, it is what it is. The current funding is an additional €64 million, which, as we all know, falls short of what the Minister of State needs in order to try to make an impact on improving the lives of people with disabilities.

I want to concentrate on two things. The first is transport for people with disabilities. In 2013, the motorised transport scheme and the mobility allowance scheme were suspended. People who were on those schemes are still getting support but people who were not them after that date are no longer doing so. No other scheme has been introduced since. The Office of the Ombudsman, initially under Emily O'Reilly, producing a report and asking that something be done. It was on foot of Ms O'Reilly's report that both schemes were suspended. In 2021, Peter Tyndall produced the Grounded report in which he said that it was time to bring in a scheme to help people who need support with transport. It is now 2023, and I do not know if there is a scheme in the budget for €64 million. That is something the Minister of State might clarify.

Second, I know it is not the Minister of State's responsibility but a primary medical certificate is a matter for people with disabilities. That has been shown to be unworkable and not fit for purpose, but it has still been used to create an expectation that people will get support for the adaption of their cars when few people do. We also know the appeals board resigned because they felt the scheme was unworkable. We have failed to put an appeals board in place since then. That speaks volumes in he context of what has gone wrong.

In rural areas where you have somebody with a disability who cannot drive a car, the mobility allowance scheme was designed to give them funding to get a taxi in order to go someplace or do something that would break up the monotony of living or being imprisoned in their homes. Regardless of what we say about what we are doing with public transport, we do not have it where we need it, which is at every house where there is a person with a disability. It is no more than the matter of the section 39 workers. We all keep agreeing on it and we keep giving the platitudes about giving people hope, comfort and everything like that, and we still have not done anything about it.

On the section 39 strike and that fiasco, I mention the amount of people who have been onto me in the last two weeks, concerned about their loved ones and what would happen with them today. It went until 3 o'clock this morning until a decision was made to call off the strike. That is an example of playing Russian roulette with people who are the most vulnerable in our society and it is not a nice way to do business. The Government has to own up to the fact that this should have been sorted out last week so that people would know exactly what was going on. It is not sorted out yet. If it is not sorted out, it will be a problem for the service providers, the families of service users and the service users themselves.

The other matter I have to raise relates to the children's disability network. The Minister of State was in Tuam yesterday at the opening of the facilities we have there. Somebody started quoting the number of staff that was in CDNT 7 in Tuam, and some of the staff shouted up that we should divide that by two because that is what we really have. I was shocked, first that somebody would say this is what we have, and, second, that the staff in the HSE would say we should call a halt to this because all we are doing is creating false language in respect of what we are delivering. A large number of parents have contacted me looking for services and assessments. They are being left in the lurch and have to wait two and a half years for assessments. It is high time we decided if we will implement the UNCRPD or not. Let us stop giving people false hope.

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