Sinéad Gibney (Dublin Rathdown, Social Democrats)

I thank the Minister for being here. We welcome the opportunity to make these statements and broadly welcome this new strategy that sets out a human rights-framed vision for disability action over the coming years. Of course, we have to also highlight that the waiting still goes on, particularly for the disability community. Reports, analyses and strategies including this one are very welcome, particularly as this one is framed in the prism of human rights, but let us be clear that what we need is long overdue action. We are starting from such a bad place that we need to see real aspiration, bringing us back to our vision for a truly inclusive society. The reality for those born with a disability or those who acquire a disability through the course of their life in this State today is that the outcomes they are facing in education and employment, the key planks identified in the strategy, are so much worse than they are for any other individual. We have a long road to travel before we land at a really inclusive society.

I want to talk about those two planks, employment and education. As we heard from other speakers, in terms of employment we are an outlier with one of the worst sets of statistics for disabled people's employment across Europe. Only 36% of people in the disability community are employed. That drops to 17% for people with intellectual disabilities, and to below 20% for disabled women in Ireland. It is not only about the economic impact. During Leaders' Questions earlier, Deputy Cairns raised the fact that 76% of people who are disabled are facing poverty. It is not just about the economic impact of not being able to access labour; it is also about the autonomy and dignity that flows from that. They are not able to provide for themselves or their families. They are not able to achieve the satisfaction we all seek in work that we do. AHEAD, the employment-focused NGO that deals in disability rights, has found that it is not just about jobs and numbers for people with disabilities. It is about accessing the kind of work they want to access and that their talents lend themselves towards. It is about opportunities for advancement within that, and trying to get to the point where individuals are actually competing alongside their peers in a true fashion and not just always dealing with what is available to them as someone with a disability. The infrastructure around that is another issue dealt with in other planks of the strategy in terms of transport and so on. Access to labour is dependent on us having a decent infrastructure for people to access.

On the specific experience of people with intellectual disabilities, it is wonderful when we see people employed in those roles but sadly it is incredibly sporadic. There are no consistent structures or programmes available to people with intellectual disabilities to access employment. We are so far behind other countries in this. In Spain there is a now a legislator, Mar Galcerán, representing her constituents in a regional parliament in Spain. We are so far from that. This brings me to my second area: education. The two are inextricably linked because accessing employment relies on us having access to education throughout our lives. Even today during Leaders' Questions, the Taoiseach was celebrating that we have opened 16 special schools this year. The fact that we are talking about special schools again as being the point of achievement tells me that we have drifted so far from what inclusive education should be. People in my office spoke to a constituent recently whose two children are sent out in taxis to different locations, passing by the school that is just metres away from their home and their neighbours, so they can access appropriate education. We know this is an issue for so many people. That mother asked my colleague why her child does not have a voice and why she does not matter. We have moved so far from what inclusive education should be. We should be able to access the education that is suited to our needs regardless of the ability or disability we have. I welcome the strategy and the ambition that it holds. We have a lot further to go and we need to see the follow-through on an inclusive society and a shift in perception on disability. Equality is not a favour to those among us with disabilities. It is a recognition of the humanity of those individuals.

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