Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I commend Deputy Tully and Sinn Féin on bringing forward this motion. As a member of the Joint Committee on Disability Matters it is important that I focus in on a few things. We have looked for the ratification of the UN protocol. We issued a report on that. I was disappointed this week to see an announcement that some other report will now be prepared by Government. That will be brought before it later in the year, and we will end up with a situation where it will look to see if it is in a position to bring this in. Bringing it in is part of the programme for Government. It is running out of time. I ask them to get on with doing this before the Government ends its rule.

We are talking about carers and it is important. Everybody gives a story about what is happening in each constituency. People come into my office from all over the constituency who are crying out for help to try to keep somebody in their home. They are looking for home care help. They are looking for assistance so people do not go into long-term nursing care. The cost to the State is very high when you go into a nursing home. If you can keep somebody at home, it is an awful lot less, but there seems to be a disdain for trying to support carers. We will talk about this more in the coming weeks, but the first thing we need to do is look at getting rid of means testing for carers. That is it. We should make sure that anybody caring for a family member or somebody else is treated with respect and that the investment of their time is matched by investment from the State.

In Tuam before Christmas we had people protesting outside the recently opened CDNT 7 offices because we do not have enough staff. The reality is that parents are being told there are so many funded positions within that unit. In the space of two months they got two different spreadsheets with different numbers of people funded. We have not got an explanation yet as to what has happened. What it does show is that there is a reduction in the number of funded positions and there are therefore not as many vacancies. It seems to be a cynical approach to try to hoodwink parents and it is something we have to look at very carefully.

Another thing has crept into the middle of this, and I do not know where it came from, is special education teaching hours, how they were drafted and the criteria by which they are to be implemented. AsIAm came out today and said it is totally wrong that families with the lived experience were not consulted when these new criteria and circulars came out. The only way they can now be reviewed is through individual schools and not with the families. At this time we have to say we have regressed further, we have put the people with disability further back in the queue, and we have put carers way back in the queue. It is time for a wake-up call on this.

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