Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I send our sympathies to the families and friends of the young people who died and were injured in the horrific crash in Carlow last night. Such a shocking loss of so many young lives is devastating and my thoughts are with them today.

I will start with a quote:

The story for people with disabilities continues to worsen year after year. Access to therapies is simply appalling and respite care and opportunities for work for people with disabilities are very poor. The assessment of need statutory rules are continuously breached [...] We also know that the Government scrapped the mobility allowance and the motorised transport grant [...] We have been waiting for the new scheme for four years and seven months, longer than the duration of the First World War. There is no excuse for this inertia and lack of progress.

The Tánaiste might recognise those words because they were delivered by him in opposition during Leaders' Questions in October 2017. Leo Varadkar was the Taoiseach then too. Maybe the Tánaiste can help me and point to one single thing that has changed in the intervening six and a half years other than the Tánaiste entering government. The only thing that comes to mind is it has now been 11 years since those transport schemes were scrapped, or to use the Tánaiste's analogy, more than twice the duration of the First World War, and still there is no replacement. Is it any wonder disabled people and parents of children with disabilities feel not just ignored by successive Governments but actively harmed? The consistent failure to provide basic supports is not just some kind of an inconvenience, but is ruining people's lives. It prohibits early intervention, results in social isolation and increased rates of poverty and ultimately prevents people from being able to live a full and independent life.

The delivery of disability services by this Government can be summarised by one word: failure. The failure starts early when children are left waiting for assessments and then denied access to essential therapies and it continues throughout a person's life, such as when you cannot access education, are locked out of employment or cannot get nearly the amount of personal assistance hours you need. The list goes on and on. It is infuriating for people to listen to the same broken promises from successive Governments for years. When the Tánaiste was in opposition he made lots of commitments to improve services. What does he have to say about those commitments? Tens of thousands of people are stuck on waiting lists. The only thing disabled people are guaranteed access to is a long waiting list. When is this going to change?

My questions are as follows: when will the children's disability network teams, CDNTs, be fully staffed? When will a new motorised transport grant be introduced? When will the Government ratify the optional protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities?

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