Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for being here today. I thank Solidarity-People Before Profit for tabling this motion. Much has been covered here. This is about disability justice and disability injustice. Many people have covered the options of trying to get work, proper living accommodation and public transport. There is a myriad of barriers after barriers. I have raised how bad the system is with two Ministers here recently. I can give the name of an individual because she and her mother gave me permission. Katie from Cobh is a 17-year-old girl. She was diagnosed with cerebral palsy when she was around four. She has an issue with her hip. She has been waiting for 14 years for a hip operation. She has been going into hospitals, being told it is cerebral palsy and that she will be too weak, may not be strong enough or may get blood clots. There are excuses after excuses. I met that girl a number of weeks ago. She is now with adult services. She had been lost in the children's system and has now gone into the adult system, which is giving the same excuses about if they did operate, saying she may never walk again, yet there are two surgeons in Delaware and one in Texas who can have this girl walking in six weeks for a cost of €300,000. That is injustice.

Labelling people with a disability because of the failings to ratify the optional protocol is discrimination against those who are less well able-bodied. We mentioned public transport. How do people have an opportunity to even try to get work if they cannot access the opportunity to travel to these places to get work? We are talking about housing crises but nobody has mentioned properly adapted houses that make provision for everybody, abled or not. As for the way we are going about and talking about it, while I welcome that the paper has been scrapped and that some positives can be picked out of it, when talking about social justice or disability justice, I note that poor girl, Katie Byrne, is not the only case I know of in this country where there are issues. Just recently, I spoke to another girl who is only six who has a similar problem. I spoke to her mother on it and she is getting the exact same excuses. She will probably go through the whole system again and that is what we have to highlight. Nobody should be left behind on this.

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