Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I compliment People Before Profit-Solidarity on tabling this very important motion for discussion today. I am a member of the Joint Committee on Disability Matters and, sadly, many of the issues the committee has heard about over the last three or four years remain current. Solutions are not being found. The Government could take a hand over many of the things that are happening and try to sort them out without any more toing and froing.

In 2019, an INDECON report noted an increase in the cost of living with a disability. That increased cost has become worse with inflation in the intervening years, but there is no sign of the Government putting in place some sort of support to help people with disability with the cost of living with their disability. To compound matters, the transport and mobility schemes to aid people with disabilities were withdrawn in 2011. Mr. Peter Tyndall, the Ombudsman at the time, prepared a report on transport for people with disabilities titled Grounded - Unequal Access for People with Disabilities to Personal Transport Schemes. It presents an apt description of how people with disabilities have been left without any supports. The current situation is that some people who have a disability are getting supports, while no supports are available to others who applied after a certain date.

The primary medical certificate system to help people who need to make adjustments to their cars to make them more usable and adaptable is farcical. The criteria, which require people to be an amputee, mean very few people get a primary medical certificate. The problem was compounded by the fact that the members of the appeals board resigned and there is a difficulty getting a new board in place. They resigned because they felt they were ineffective because there was no latitude in the scheme. Promises have been made to establish a new scheme for three or four years. Working groups have been set up and strategies were to be developed but people have been left without any support.

If we are serious about helping people with disabilities to live as independently as possible and giving them the rights they deserve and are entitled to, we have to show it through action. The cost of living with a disability and the transport support schemes are two areas in which the Government could make a huge difference to people's lives within a very short time.

When people who have a disability decide to get married, their disability allowance will be cut if their husband or wife is working. The disability will not have changed but disabled persons become a burden on their wife or husband by becoming reliant on them to provide funding for them to live. Let us just think about that. It is criminal in this day and age that we would continue with this farce of trying to cut people's disability allowance when their disability does not go away.

On children with disabilities, I had some hope that things might change when the children's disability network teams were set up. My experience has been that parents come into me to try to get assessments. This has nothing to do with welfare or anything like that; it is just parents trying to get an assessment. They come in to me and break down crying. They are in need of mental health support themselves because they cannot get an assessment for their child. The child might be violent and uncontrollable at home at times. However, when they contact CAMHS, they are told that it cannot do anything because it does not have the assessment. The CDNTs will say an assessment will be done within the next 18 months. Families are living in hell on earth because of that, as I witnessed again in the past week. It is something we need to sort out as a matter of urgency.

In my local area of Tuam, parents took to the streets last December just before Christmas. The CDNT has a brand-new building, the team has moved in there and we were told this will be a panacea to all problems. The parents found out, however, that the opposite is the case. The team is not even staffed up to half of what is required. At the same time, if parents can get an assessment in the private sector, the State will not pay for the assessment as a matter of principle. The principle behind that approach is that the families should suffer and let the child wait. They will not be allowed to get a private assessment so that they can move things on because it is not the right thing to do in the long term. This is not the right thing to do in the short or long term for the child or family.

Ratification of the United Nations protocol to the CRPD is a commitment in the programme for Government.

The Joint Committee on Disability Matters last year issued a report calling for the Government to put that protocol in place because without it, we are giving lip service to people with disabilities. In the meantime, they have rights to exercise and cannot take the Government to court if they feel they are not getting a service. The Government has that commitment in the programme for Government but its remaining time in office is, at best, between now and next March. I hope the commitment on that protocol will be enacted sooner rather than later.

Another issue I come across relates to school places for people with disabilities, especially in special secondary schools and national schools. People are on waiting lists. For the only secondary school in Galway city with places for people with disabilities, there is a list of eight people who are waiting to get into the school next September. Parents do not know what will happen if their children do not get into such schools. The Department might say it will support, for example, an ASD unit in a national school but resources will only be given if the school in question has the space to run those services itself. The Department will not provide additional accommodation. We have an enormous disconnect in respect not only of social welfare but also in respect of disability and all that goes with it. I will leave it at that. There is a lot of work to be done.

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