Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank all the Deputies for their contributions on the large-scale reforms we all recognise are needed in the areas of disability and care. I also thank them for speaking to the individual constituents and the extremely difficult individual cases that all of us as constituency TDs face daily, and our knowledge that the entire system needs to do so much more for people with a disability.

It is always a bit difficult to speak in detail in reply to a Deputy when they are not in the Chamber but I want to touch on some of the points made by Deputy Connolly regarding the referendum coming up on Friday. In particular, she referred to a case before the courts. It is a case where the High Court clearly held that the existing Article 41.2, which may be deleted if there is a "Yes" vote on Friday, has not delivered anything for the family in that particular case. The High Court held very clearly that case did not benefit that family in that situation.

Deputy Connolly was critical of the proposed Article 42B, which will place a new legal obligation on the State to strive to support care within the family, yet defended an article that locates care of children as a role of mothers, and only married mothers. Let us remember in the definition of Article 41.2, it is the married family we are talking about whereas the new language will talk about care, including care of parents for children not just by mothers but by dads as well, care for elderly parents and care for those with a disability. The existing text talks about only mothers, and in the context of Article 41.2 only married mothers.

Deputy Connolly has made this argument in the past that she will take her chances with the existing Article 41.2 and that she does not agree it is restricted to mothers and women, even though the very clear text of Article 41.2 states "mothers" and "women". She said that the Supreme Court could interpret it in a different way and it could. There is a potential there. I will speak to two cases in recent years - one is now a bit old but one was very recent - where the Irish courts examined the provisions of Article 41 and have had the opportunity to reinterpret things or to broaden things out. The first case is Zappone v. Gilligan case from 2006 where a former Minister and her late wife sought to have the constitutional definition of "marriage" in Article 41 redefined and broadened out to include same-sex couples. In that case, which was a High Court decision, Mr. Justice Dunne made it very clear that it was not the court's role to redefine the institution of marriage in Article 41 and that it was a job for the legislators or indeed for the people. I remember I was hopping mad when that judgment came out but that was the decision. The court said, "No, it is not our job to redefine."

Then four weeks ago the in the O'Meara case, Johnny O'Meara asked the court to redefine the term "family" in Article 41 to say that it should not just be the married family even though that is what the text of Article 41 says, it should be other families as well. This is so instructive. This is a recent case. This was four weeks ago in our Supreme Court and the majority, five, of the seven judges in the Supreme Court said, "No, we will not define family to include non-marital families." Reading the judgments, particularly that of the Chief Justice, we can see they were uncomfortable and that very dated notion of the family that Article 41 speaks to now is not their preference. However, they were very clear that redefining the "family" in Article 41 is a job for the people through a referendum. Deputy Connolly can take her chances that one day a court will redefine "woman" as also being "man" and that it will define "mother" and "father" but the very clear evidence from the Supreme Court only four weeks ago is that it will not take that chance. The courts will interpret the Constitution as it is written and the job of changing the Constitution and broadening it out, whether in terms of care or the family, rests with the people. We have that opportunity on Friday. We have an opportunity to broaden the definition of "family", to remove outdated, sexist language and to bring in a new provision centred on all the different dimensions of care and placing a new legal onus on the State to do more. We all know, and I acknowledge very clearly as a Minister, that we need to do more. This Government needs to do more and future Governments need to do more as well.

A number of Deputies spoke to the UNCRPD and the optional protocol, including Deputies Tully and Cullinane. The Taoiseach, the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, and I have all stated our very clear goal that we need to ratify the optional protocol. We know that a body of Irish law right now clearly is not compliant with the UNCRPD. We have changed one of those non-compliant laws. We got rid of that outdated notion of wardship and brought in the Decision Support Service. In terms of the steps we are taking to put us in the position where we can ratify the UNCRPD, we have already made life better for people in Ireland who have limitations to their capacity. We have already improved things for them through that change.

We will have to make other changes and that is why last year the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, and I got our Department to commission an audit of those laws where we are clearly in breach of the UNCRPD. We decided at Cabinet today that this audit - which is just about finished, we currently have a draft and will get a completed document soon - will be brought to an interdepartmental group where the top civil servants from different Departments will have to take responsibility for the changes that need to be made in legislation or in policies within their own Department. That will be reported back to Cabinet and will allow accountability in the delivery of those changes and Deputies will be able to see those changes come through in legislation. I reiterate that our goal is to get the UNCRPD ratified.

In the couple of minutes remaining to me I will speak to those elements specifically within my remit and that of the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte. I will speak particularly to the disability action plan. The Government is committed to the expansion of specialised services for persons with disabilities. Last December, we published the Action Plan for Disability Services 2024-2026. That was informed by the capacity review that the Department of Health previously had commissioned setting out where the current gaps in services are and where the new pressures will be on services, looking at demographics, our ageing population and the fact we have significantly more young children presenting with conditions on the autistic spectrum.

The motion calls on the Government to increase access to specialist disability services, which is something the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, and I agree with wholeheartedly. We are ambitious in using the Estimates process in how we grow access to specialist disability services. We increased the budget for disabilities by more than €200 million this year. Of that, €75 million was put directly into new services and a significant amount of that new investment was looking at specialist disability services. There was €20.5 million for new residential places, €15 million for additional respite services, €18.2 million for new day services places for school leavers and €8.5 million specifically for children's services. We are looking to roll out the kind of initiatives that the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, has spotted as she goes around the various CHOs and as she talks to people on the front line, such as the assistant therapy grades. There was almost €12 million for other developments such as 80,000 extra PA hours and the neurological supports that the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, has championed. There are also discrete services that she mentioned earlier on that are making a very meaningful impact on families and children with disabilities in particular within their own communities.

They are services that are not happening at a national level but are services the Minister of State has seen making a difference through her engagement at local level. These are the types of services that we need to support.

The biggest challenge we face is that of workforce, recruitment and retention. Every Deputy has spoken eloquently about the pressures on CDNTs and that a 34% vacancy rate is such a problem. Again, the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, has focused on that in terms of a recruitment campaign. She has been working with the HSE to drive a recruitment campaign that took place over Christmas. Some 500 people expressed an interest. Therapists, occupational and speech and language therapists, coming back for Christmas expressed interest in taking up roles specifically within the CDNTs and not in any other part of the health system. As the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte said, interviews are taking place in the community health organisations all over the country to convert those applications of interest into roles, into therapists, and into people who are delivering interventions, services, therapies and assessments of need in our CDNTs around the country. It is the additional staff in these CDNTs who will make the biggest difference to families around the country. I thank the Ceann Comhairle for his indulgence.

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