Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

I want to start by thanking all the disabled people's organisations that have participated in preparing this motion. Their demands are front and centre, which is exactly as it should be. So far, there is no sign of a Government countermotion, so I presume that means the Government is not going to oppose our motion and will allow it to pass. Before there is uproar and celebration in the Visitors Gallery, I would warn that this Government has a long and not very proud history of allowing motions to pass and then not doing anything about the things that are passed in the motion. I would say that if this passes this evening, while that is obviously welcome, it needs to be implemented.

There are six main demands in the motion and the Government has so far fully committed to one, which is to immediately scrap the Green Paper. That is, of course, welcome. What was proposed was a Tory-style workfare regime reminiscent of the film "I, Daniel Blake". I recall that when I first raised this with the former Taoiseach, Deputy Leo Varadkar, he said that "I, Daniel Blake" was a good movie but one-sided and that you should watch “Benefits Street” to see the other side of the story, encapsulating this Tory mindset of deserving and undeserving people with disabilities. The fact that the Government came up with such draconian proposals in the first place reveals an awful lot about the attitude to people with disabilities. Unfortunately, the Tory mindset is not gone as a consequence of the decision to scrap the Green Paper. For too long, disabled people have been treated appallingly by the State, committed to institutions, forced to live in poverty and isolation, prevented from participating equally in society and denied fundamental human rights. That has to stop. Disabled people are uniting and organising to demand their rights. It is high time that the Government and the State started really listening to them and started consulting with them in a meaningful way, rather than proposing policies from on high that fail to meet their needs.

One hopes that the scrapping of the Green Paper is a step in that direction. Let us see. There will certainly be a push to demand it. That would not have happened without the determined campaign of resistance ever since the Green Paper was first published. The Government attempted to ignore that and attempted to push on, but disabled activists did not back down and, in the end, they won this important victory. That and the massive “No” vote in the care referendum should put the Government and the institutions of the State on notice that ignoring and mistreating people with disabilities and carers will not be possible any longer. The Government must start taking meaningful steps towards guaranteeing equal rights for disabled people. Tokenism will not be tolerated. The Government is awash with cash and has more than enough money that should be put where its mouth is. There must be no more striving to support. We need real action and real resources now.

We have heard from disabled people's organisations about what kind of system and resources they need. They want universal payments that cover the real costs of having a disability and provide them with reliable income security. No one should have to live in poverty and certainly not because they have a disability, but poverty and deprivation are what many thousands of people in this country endure on a daily basis. One in five people who is unable to work due to long-standing health problems lives in consistent poverty and one in two lives in deprivation. That is shameful. Disabled people are twice as likely to be homeless and far less likely to have a job, with the highest rate of unemployment in the EU.

It is important to point out that the State is not just failing to meet the needs of people who are disabled. The State is disabling people by failing to put in place the mechanisms to support people. A key mechanism through which this is done is the dehumanising and traumatising system of means tests. It is degrading and time-consuming and it wastes resources that should be used to help people instead of forcing them to continually prove and re-prove that they need assistance. It has no purpose other than as a form of State discipline, a way of discouraging people from getting what they are entitled to, humiliating them for having needs and minimising what the State so reluctantly doles out. It situates everyone in need of assistance as a potential welfare cheat, not to be trusted. That is what Deputy Leo Varadkar was getting at with his “Benefits Street” reference. This should have no place anywhere in our social welfare system and it must be abolished.

We in People Before Profit stand for universal benefits and universal public services for all. For carers, this must provide a real living wage that recognises the essential work they do, day in, day out. Globally, capitalism saves $11 trillion a year from unpaid care work and many trillions of dollars more by systematically underpaying paid care workers, most of whom are women. We need a massive expansion of personal assistance hours to enable people to participate fully in society and we also need to ensure that personal assistants and all other care workers get the pay and conditions they deserve. We cannot continue with a society that gives golden handshakes to bankers and executives but the cold shoulder to disabled people and carers. It is welcome that the new Taoiseach has finally committed to ratifying the optional protocol to the UNCRPD this year but we still have no date as to when this will happen. Time is ticking on this Government and we need it to ratify the protocol now.

He said that the backlog in assessments of need has to be unblocked but we have not seen any details as to how this will happen. Almost 9,000 children are overdue for assessment of need and more than 17,000 are waiting for first contact with a children's disability network team, CDNT. I have figures that an activist got from extensive FOI requests, which indicate that almost 9,000 children have been waiting almost 12 months for those initial contacts. Those FOI replies reveal mistakes across the board in terms of discrepancies in the figures which mean there is a real problem in terms of planning, but it also reveals the cause of these problems and of the massive delay. The vacancy rates across the board for therapists and other staff are through the roof, with a rate of 40% for occupational therapists, 70% for dietitians, 30% for family support workers, 30% for care assistants and 70% for play therapists; I could go on with the list. The result is that even when children get an assessment of need, over 110,000 are on a waiting list for treatment.

The Ombudsman for Children has accused the State of a profound violation of children's rights with regard to disability care. The report Nowhere to Turn aptly describes how children with complex disabilities are left in inappropriate settings for months due to the failure of the State to provide them with home supports. Parents are forced to fight for services for their children that are considered basic human rights in most European countries. The truth is that this State has never cherished all of the children of the nation equally and this Government is continuing that disgraceful tradition of discrimination and neglect. Rather than speculating €100 billion in public money on international markets, as it is planning to do with the future Ireland fund, that should be invested in public services and a better quality of life for all who live here right now. From assessment of need to financial and respite support to parents and carers, and raising pay and conditions for workers in the disability sector, all of the arms of the State need to work together and take responsibility instead of passing the buck between them and outsourcing services to underfunded NGOs reliant on charitable fundraising.

Our final demand in the motion is for a constitutional amendment to assert equality for disabled people and guarantee rights for all. That is what we need.

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