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

I did not interrupt the Minister. The Government got a kicking in the recent referendum precisely for that reason.

People with disabilities felt insulted, treated with contempt and ignored. They expected to be given rights in that referendum. My God, I certainly am not a fan, as I do not think anybody could be, of the previous constitutional wording, which did nothing for people with disabilities. The reason people voted "No" to the new proposal was that they had expected to be given rights but they were not being given them. It was a conscious decision by the Government not to put in too strong a wording in case people with disabilities would actually have enforceable legal rights. These were conscious decisions.

What are the consequences of that attitude of the Government for people with disabilities? First, as our motion states, they have additional costs, compared with the rest of the population, of between €9,000 and €13,000 a year. There is wholly inadequate support to take into account this cost of disability. As a result, one in five people unable to work due to long-standing health problems lives in consistent poverty. One in two of them lives in deprivation. People with disabilities are twice as likely to be homeless. They are more likely to be unemployed or underemployed, with Ireland having the highest level of unemployment in the European Union among disabled people. Persons with disabilities are twice as likely to leave school early. They are more likely to suffer from ill health, with 25% reporting bad or very bad health, 43% suffering depression and a quarter having unmet health needs. This reality is a result of the failure of the Government to listen and respond to the needs of people with disabilities and to enforce their rights to equality, which they have under the UNCRPD.

The area of assessment of special needs is an absolute disgrace, with more than 8,000 people waiting for assessment. In my office, we regularly have to refer families seeking assessment to barristers. They have to go to court to obtain an assessment of needs for their children. That is now the route to assessment. Moreover, when families obtain an assessment, the chances of actually getting the services they need are virtually zero because of the chronic understaffing and under-resourcing of CDNTs, child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, teams and so on. There is a game of pushing people from one service to the other. Parents are told they are supposed to go to CAMHS rather than the CDNT, or vice versa. Of course, all the services are understaffed and under-resourced in any event.

I offer some examples from a public meeting we held recently in Dún Laoghaire. We spoke to the parents of a nine-year-old who was identified as having issues at the age of six. The child had an initial assessment with CAMHS, with a query of autism spectrum disorder, ASD. Now aged nine, this child still has not had an assessment of need. Her parents were told she does not meet the criteria for intervention by the CDNT. She has had no interventions at all. Her school considers her a flight risk. On many days, she refuses to go to school, which means her parents have to skip work.

We spoke to the parent of another child, aged 11, who has severe ASD and has been allocated home schooling provision. His mother was coping with that for a number of years but the situation became impossible last September. It was February before she got a placement. She is now facing into a situation in which her young boy has no placement for the autumn, when he is due to go to secondary school.

Another mother at the meeting has a 17-year-old child who was diagnosed with ASD at age six. In the 11 years since, he has had three occupational therapy interventions. That is it. When he hits 18, he will lose all his supports entirely.

Regarding housing for people with disabilities, I am currently fighting a case with a lovely young woman who is mother to beautiful twins who, sadly, have been diagnosed with what is probably a unique diagnosis anywhere in the history of the world. Both children have cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy. To their doctors' knowledge, there has never been a diagnosis like it. We have been fighting with the council for I do not know how long for priority to be given to meeting the housing needs of these children. Even as we speak, the council is resisting and trying to push their mother into accepting housing that the children's doctors and consultants say does not meet their needs. One can only imagine how hard it is for this young woman of two children with that diagnosis, which will be completely life-changing for her. We are talking about conditions that will worsen over time. Both her children will end up in wheelchairs and facing constant infection issues. She needs a very particular type of accommodation but the council is resisting and is trying to force her into housing that will not meet those needs. There is even a fear that she may be knocked off the housing list if she does not accept what the council is trying to force upon her. It is absolutely outrageous.

Another woman we are dealing with at the moment is in a homeless hub with a three-year-old and a five-week-old who has just been diagnosed with cystic fibrosis. Obviously, a homeless hub is the worst place for a child with cystic fibrosis, with a constant fear of infection because of the number of people living there. This woman is trapped in a homeless hub. I could go on with more examples.

What do we need? We need the Government to accept the rights of people with disabilities. We must end the disgraceful means-testing of disability payments, carer's payments and so on. We need a new referendum to establish the constitutional rights of people with disabilities. We must have universal payments that actually take into account the cost of living. We need housing and transport that make equality and accessibility a reality for people with disability.

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