Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

-----if people would give me the opportunity.

On Monday, with our local Labour representative Patrick Dempsey, I was privileged to visit the SAOL Hub in Ballyfermot Community Civic Centre run by Stewarts Care. We heard first-hand the challenges facing young adults with disabilities - the under-resourcing and lack of opportunities. As the Taoiseach knows, disabled people are at a much higher risk of poverty and social exclusion. They are more likely to be out of work and to leave education early. In 2015, I was proud to be involved in the creation of the comprehensive employment strategy for people with disabilities. Yet almost ten years on, Ireland still has the highest disability employment gap in the EU at almost twice the European average. There are many reasons for this, but a failure to support people to overcome barriers is fundamental to Ireland's poor outcomes. There is still no recognition of the cost of a disability and if a person takes up work, he or she may lose their medical card.

However, many parents cannot even think about future employment when they are swamped with the difficulties of accessing services and supports for their children. When the Deputy became Taoiseach, he said disability would be one of his priorities and we welcomed that. He knows this is a burning issue for many families. There are huge delays in assessment of needs for children with almost 15,000 on waiting lists. There is a lack of supports for young adults when they leave the education system. There is huge disquiet about the resourcing of additional complex needs in schools, and the chronic failure to ensure access to occupational therapists, speech and language therapists, psychologists and so on. A few weeks ago, we had a national discussion about the rights of disabled people, yet it has fallen off the political radar again. It is the last week of May and no allocations have been released yet for special needs assistants. It shows enormous disrespect for educational staff. Principals of special schools have highlighted the need for therapists to be in their schools, rather than allocated to the HSE's children's disability network teams. This mistake, introduced six years ago, is now being reversed but there are huge barriers to recruitment because they were not being offered permanent contracts. The Minister now has to go to the Department of public expenditure and reform to get sanction for what should have been obvious in the first place. There was no consultation with disability organisations about the removal of complex needs criteria from the allocation of special educational teachers. Yesterday, the Minister had to admit that an additional 1,000 teacher hours would have to be allocated. Schools are being forced to go to the NCSE to fill the gap when they do not have alternative supports. Inclusion Ireland has said that all policies should be rights proofed and child centred and this needs to be revisited.

These are the questions I have for the Taoiseach almost two months into his term. The Ceann Comhairle might allow some latitude as I was interrupted at the beginning. What has been done to address the cost of disability, and will there be a new comprehensive employment strategy for people with disabilities? Will the Taoiseach consult disability organisations and reverse the removal of complex needs hours from schools? Will he guarantee every child will have a place in September? When will allocations for SNAs be made? It is getting later and later every year.

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