Liam Quaide (Cork East, Social Democrats)

I thank the Minister for being here. The Government's newly launched national human rights strategy for disabled people is strong on aspirational language but we have yet to see any details on implementation such as funding commitments, staffing benchmarks or timeframes to back it up. For a sector that is so deep in crisis across all areas, including educational placements, access to therapies in residential services, employment and transport, a disability strategy with meaningful targets has never been more urgently needed.

In fairness, there are action plans for this strategy to follow. The first is to be published within three months of this document's publication. It is imperative that these contain clear timelines, benchmarks and funding commitments. As much as we should welcome the human rights-focused language of this strategy and its emphasis on consultation with disabled people, the document will be largely meaningless if its implementation is not funded in upcoming budgets. We have had visionary Government documents on disability reform in the past that have essentially come to nothing because they were not followed by political will to invest in services and to vindicate the rights of our disabled citizens.

It is extremely worrying that the strategy contains no clear commitment to upholding the rights of children with additional needs to be educated within their local communities. While Article 24 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is clear on a disabled person's right to "an inclusive education system at all levels" in the communities in which they live, the Government's strategy only commits to "Develop a Roadmap for Inclusive Education ... to take account of ... Ireland’s commitments under the" UNCRPD. This is vague non-committal language that will offer no comfort to families facing lengthy gruelling commutes to their child's school.

Another crisis skirted by this strategy is that of waiting lists in primary care services. The strategy aims to "Deliver actions to ensure more timely access to primary care therapy". There is also reference in the document to building capacity in primary care but, crucially, there is no commitment to staffing targets for these services in either the disability strategy itself or the roadmap documents it refers to. The strategy does clearly commit to a single point of access approach to services across primary care, disability and child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS. While this will certainly help prevent children being passed from one waiting list to the next, it will not paper over the cracks of chronic underresourcing of primary care services and the continued recruitment restrictions imposed on them by the pay and numbers strategy.

As I confirmed earlier this year through parliamentary questions, the neglect of these services by successive governments over many years has led to children throughout the country routinely waiting many years for supports such as occupational therapy, physiotherapy, psychology and speech and language therapy. Within those figures are instances of children waiting nine and a half years for occupational therapy in the Dublin north area, seven years for physiotherapy in the north Lee area in Cork, six years for speech and language therapy in the Dublin north west area and an incredible 13 and a half years for psychology in the same area. It shocked primary care clinicians when the Taoiseach claimed during Leaders' Questions in July that a recruitment embargo had not been applied to these services. An embargo certainly was employed from November 2023 to July 2024. Since then, the Government's pay and numbers strategy has continued to hamper recruitment. Even prior to these restrictions, there had been chronic underresourcing of primary care for years and the redirection of large numbers of young people from children's disability network teams when the progressing disability model of care was rolled out.

Children basically went from one waiting list to the next without the necessary recruitment following them. The disability strategy refers very briefly to the over 1,200 disabled people aged under 65 who are residing in nursing homes due to a lack of specialised residential services, rehabilitation and statutory home care supports. There is no indication, however, of how the Government will commit to the findings of the ombudsman's Wasted Lives report into their circumstances, which is now four years old. In the action plans to follow this new disability strategy, it is vital that the Government moves beyond aspirational language towards clear timeframes, staffing benchmarks and funding commitments. We also need to see an unambiguous commitment to uphold the right of people with disabilities to be educated within their local communities and to plan for creating that capacity.

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