Séamus Healy (Tipperary South, Independent)

Disabled people are entitled to live life to the full. They must have an opportunity to take full part in society, education, healthcare, housing, employment, justice, transport, entertainment and so on. This strategy fails to outline an urgent concrete implementation plan, and such a plan is needed if Ireland is to comply with its obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The strategy is generalised, non-specific, lacking in detail and lacking in funding, and this Government is again failing people with disabilities. The key to disabled people taking their rightful place in society is assessment at an early age. Every child is entitled by law to receive an assessment of need within six months of referral. Successive governments have been breaking this law for years. Apparently, governments are above the law.

I first raised this issue in the House in January of 2017 with the current Tánaiste and then Minister for Health, Deputy Harris. The position now is monumentally worse. Some 16,500 children are waiting for assessment. Thousands of them have been waiting for more than two years. Over 40,000 children are on waiting lists for various therapies, including occupational therapy, physiotherapy, speech and language and psychology. This is shameful, and there is no plan in this strategy to tackle these outrageous waiting lists. When is this Government going to put together a concrete plan to eliminate these waiting lists?

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