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

I thank Deputy Tully for bringing forward this motion. It is welcome that the Government has finally made a commitment to ratifying the optional protocol within the next 12 months. Ireland ratified the convention in 2018. We were the last country in the EU to do that and six years on, we have not ratified the optional protocol.

The optional protocol is poorly named. Far from being an optional addition, it is a crucial tool for the implementation of the UNCRPD. All states which signed the convention are obliged to take steps to ensure that disabled people can exercise their human rights. When a state fail to uphold these rights, the optional protocol allows individuals and groups to hold it accountable. It empowers people with disabilities to stand up against discriminatory laws and practices by the State, which is why it is vital to ratify the optional protocol as soon as possible.

Earlier, the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, and the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, announced the establishment of an interdepartmental group to accelerate the work to ratify the optional protocol. The press release states that this work is being undertaken due to delays at UN level and that ratification had been expected to follow Ireland's first periodic review under the convention. However, these delays are not news to me, and they certainly are not news to the Minister of State. The Joint Committee on Disability Matters received briefings from IHREC in June 2021 outlining the backlog in the UN and the need for the Government to bring forward its plan for ratification. The Secretary General of the Department of children acknowledged those delays at the time, stated that the Department would be very open to ratifying the convention much sooner and outlined that the original timeframe it was assuming that the timeframe for the UN reporting cycle to completed and ratification to be done was the middle of 2022. How is it that in March 2024 we are being told that the work is only beginning, that only last August did the Minister seek external legal advice as to what work needed to be done for Ireland to come into compliance with the convention, that only today is an interdepartmental group being set up and that only now, with only 12 months left in the lifetime of this Government, is the Taoiseach giving a firm commitment to ratifying the protocol while the Minister lists off a to-do list a mile long?

Over the years, we have heard from different experts, including the UN special rapporteur, who have clearly said that the optional protocol can be ratified immediately. Disabled people should not have to wait any longer to be able to vindicate their human rights and hold the State accountable for its failures. The Government must set a date for ratification. Why on earth has it been left it this late, namely, four years in to a five-year term? Why is this never a priority?

Week after week in this Chamber, we raise the crises facing the disability sector. Every time, we get the exact same rhetoric back from Government - that it cares, that it is doing everything it possibly can and, basically, how dare we even question that. If this Government will not invest in disability services when it has a €14 billion budget, then when will it? When does the Government intend to take its responsibility seriously?

The disability capacity review, published in 2021, quantifies the current and future need for support services. One of the key issues highlighted was:

...significant levels of unmet need for disability services, and that changes in the size and age profile of the disability service population will add to unmet need over the coming decade. Addressing demographic change alone would not be sufficient, as the current level of unmet need is not sustainable.

There is a need to spend between €550 million and €1 billion extra each year to meet the needs of the growing and ageing population between now and 2032.

This funding is needed for residential services and supported housing, adult day programmes, multidisciplinary therapy services, personal assistance and respite. The disability capacity review outlined the situation and it was up to the Government to respond. There have been three separate budgets since that review was published and none of them has come close to meeting the funding targets. The last budget only allocated an extra €64 million of additional expenditure for investment in disability services.

In our alternative budget the Social Democrats allocated a total package of €534.1 million for disability services, ensuring adequate funding for the huge capacity gaps that exist in services. The Cost of Disability in Ireland report found that it can cost more than €12,000 annually to have a disability in Ireland. We know it can be well in excess of that amount in many instances. This impacts on the quality of life for individuals and families and it also impacts on people's future prospects.

The Social Democrats have repeatedly proposed a €30 weekly cost-of-disability payment in addition to increases in core social welfare rates. That is because with the cost of disability combined with systemic underemployment and the massive unmet needs in care, it is no wonder we have disgraceful and shamefully high rates of consistent poverty and social isolation among disabled people. Adding to the level of isolation is the completely inadequate approach to accessible pedestrian infrastructure and public transport outlined in the Irish Wheelchair Association's, IWA's, new report, Going Nowhere. The association was in the Houses last week.

It is now more than ten years since the then Fine Gael and Labour Party Government axed the mobility allowance and the motorised transport grant. At the time, the then Minister for Transport, Deputy Varadkar, promised replacement schemes would quickly be launched. However, a decade later, those replacement schemes are nowhere to be seen. To add even further insult to injury, the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, introduced a Green Paper proposing to replace the disability allowance, invalidity pension and blind pension, which are currently paid to approximately 225,000 people, with a so-called personal support payment. Under her plan, disabled people would be subjected to a medical assessment and put into three separate categories. Those with no capacity to work would get a slightly higher weekly payment and the others would be expected to take up training or find a job. This insulting proposal is a carbon copy of a system that was introduced in the UK under austerity measures in 2008. It is the same discredited policy that led to a disabled man starving to death after his out-of-work and housing benefits were stopped. His body was discovered by the bailiffs who came to evict him. Is this really the model that our Government wants to emulate?

Early in February I was contacted by distressed parents, teachers, and principals at the sudden change to the special education teaching, SET, allocations. Jobs were lost practically overnight and vital educational supports for children with disabilities and those with other complex needs were removed from a third of all schools in the country. Changes to special education teaching allocations will be disastrous for children with additional needs. The decision by the Department of Education to completely remove children with additional needs as a criteria for the allocation of special education teaching hours is dangerous and completely illogical. The purpose of SET hours is to provide extra teaching supports to children who require additional supports in schools. For years, these hours have been allocated based on a combination of factors, including the number of children with complex needs in a school. Removing the number of pupils who require, and are legally entitled to, extra educational supports from the criteria for allocating extra educational supports is completely illogical. More than that, it is detrimental to the education, well-being and development of children with complex needs.

Disability services, or their inadequacy, is one of the issues I am contacted about the most from people across Cork South-West and beyond. Sadly, we do not have a rights-based approach to disability; we have a budget-based model. Services, supports and opportunities are decided based on Government budgets that do not allocate enough funding and they are not based on human rights. In a rights-based system, when you are entitled to a service, you receive it - from SNAs to carers, respite, accessible transport, and independent living accommodation. Ireland is so very far from this. Disabled people face an uphill battle from the day they are born. It is outrageous that often their biggest battle is with the State when they try to access basic services, such as an assessment of need, essential therapies or a school place.

See this speech in context