Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I will have seven minutes and he will have three minutes.

I just got off the phone from a call with a friend of mine who is a wheelchair user and disability rights campaigner. I asked him what I should say in this debate. He asked me to express his absolute outrage at the way the Government has handled the referendum. At this point, he is going to vote no on the referendum on care. He is doing that as somebody who voted for repeal and marriage equality. He is passionately supportive of women's rights and women's equality but he feels absolutely failed and insulted by the fact the Government has not included in the referendum rights for people with disabilities and indeed for carers. He feels the phrase "strive to" is an insult which means nothing and he has no trust in the Government or that it is - to use what I think is the Taoiseach's phrase - a stepping stone towards anything from the point of view of people with disabilities.

To support what in my opinion is his justified anger, he pointed out that, on Friday, some people with disabilities still may not be able to access polling booths. Even now, that is still a reality in some cases. He pointed out he has been waiting for a service for his wheelchair since November. As he put it, as a wheelchair user, his wheelchair is his legs, yet he has been waiting for the service since November. He was particularly enraged by Leo Varadkar's performance, which I did not see, but it was commented on today. Deputy Barry mentioned that it was on TV. He talked about the fact that if somebody in his family needed care, it would be the family members who would do it. As my friend pointed out, that is all very well if you are getting paid a couple of hundred thousand euro a year, and perhaps such people have the resources to do that, but huge numbers of people in this country do not have the resources to do it. The State has an obligation to guarantee the rights of people with disabilities. In a way, this is the problem with the referendum. I said to him, and it is still the case, that I will vote yes with no enthusiasm because it at least removes an obnoxious reference to a woman's place being in the home, but I totally get his anger at the fact it has totally failed people with disabilities and carers. Indeed, it has insulted them and enraged them.

That is a spectacular failure by the Government to have succeeded in doing that. My argument is a difficult enough one to make because the Government has made a bags of it. What is common with the existing Constitution is that it did less than nothing for women. In fact, it failed women disastrously, and it failed people with disabilities for the entire history of the State, but what people were expecting was something better and a clear commitment to rights.

Instead, what we got, which was echoed in the Taoiseach's words, is the old reliance on the family, whether it is carers or women, and it is overwhelmingly women, to pick up the bill for the failure of the State to provide the resources and services and guarantee and enshrine the rights of people with disabilities and carers in the Constitution. As a result, the Government is risking a defeat on this. Tragically it is pitting two groups of people who both want to fight for progressive social rights in this country for women and for people with disabilities against each other. That is what the Government has succeeded in doing because it did not want to commit to rights in the Constitution. That is the latest instance of the failure to legislate for rights generally.

This is not just about the Constitution, although people take the Constitution seriously, but about the failure of the Government to legislate and provide the services to guarantee equality for people with disabilities, most spectacularly instanced in the failure to ratify the optional protocol which would make the Government legally accountable to ensure equality for people with disabilities. Of course, that is coming on the heels of an 11-year fight by disability campaigners and people with disabilities to get the UNCRPD itself ratified after the Government dragged its heels. Now the Government still does not want to ratify the optional protocol. At this stage, there has to be a clear commitment. We are making one and we will have a Bill before the Dáil in the next week or so that demands another referendum that will put rights for people with disabilities into the Constitution. That is what the Government should have done this time but it failed to do. That has to be a commitment and we need dates for the optional protocol. We also need the services and the resources because, as my friend said, living with disability in Ireland is a nightmare. That is what he said. That nightmare has to be ended. The existing Constitution has certainly failed people but so has this Government and therefore people have lost their trust in it.

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