Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the service providers to the Gallery this evening and thank them for the great job they do. I thank my colleague, Deputy Tully, for bringing this motion forward. I refer to all the wrongdoing and the wrongs in the budget. This is a really important one and we would not be discussing it this evening if it was not for Deputy Tully. Budget 2024 failed people with disabilities. It failed to recognise the cost of disabilities. There are people watching this evening who cannot afford things and the Minister of State knows this. Some great words were written in the statements by the Minister and the Minister of State and great promised were made which we will hold them to. However, that does not reflect the reality for people at the moment and the Minister of State knows that. If one is a parent of a child with disabilities and told they will have to wait two or three years for the most basic of therapies - be it occupational or speech and language therapy or other necessary therapies - they will have to go and find the money. They will have to beg or borrow that money to be able to do that. Parents of children with disabilities are being pushed into poverty because of this.

What is difficult for people to reconcile is that millions and billions of euro of hard-working taxpayers' money and VAT are allocated to disabilities. Why do people then have to pay for the most basic of services? It is wholly unacceptable. This Government failed to invest adequately in disability services and failed to mainstream disability access across all of the sectors.

I sincerely welcome that the strike action was averted last night but for somebody going to bed last night who is dependent on these services, they did not know what was going to happen during the night. They had to wait until they woke up this morning to be able to say, "I'm going to be able to get out of bed today, I'm going to be able to brush my hair today and I'm going to be able to do the very basic things for myself". That is not right and the Government's hostile negotiating strategy was completely uncalled for and unjustified. It should never ever have come to that. I have spoken with union leaders around this and we have to remember there is still a huge amount of work to be done there. There are hundreds of these workers, working across Mayo to deliver essential services. There is so much more I could say but I have to give time to my colleagues.

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