Eoghan Kenny (Cork North-Central, Labour)

I thank Sinn Féin for tabling this motion and the Minister, Deputy Calleary, for his presence in the Chamber. This is an important debate because it affects every TD. People call into our constituency offices about family members or themselves in relation to their disabilities. Often, you come across people in difficult circumstances who may be on disability allowance. My colleague, Deputy Wall, gave an example. People cannot turn on the heating, afford to pay a phone bill or keep the lights on. That is the difficulty we face. It is shameful politicians would have to speak to individuals with disabilities and offer them absolutely nothing of substance to keep them warm in their homes and allow them to keep their lights on or their phone on. The rigmarole of the disability allowance form is something I struggle to comprehend. There is a difficulty for a lot of people who cannot fill out the form. I previously worked for the former Deputy, Sean Sherlock. I spent a lot of my time filling disability allowance application forms for individuals who genuinely could not do it. Now, my secretary fills out disability allowance application forms for people. Ultimately, that is the ground hurling; it is what we are there to do but it is difficult for some individuals to present at a constituency office to ask people working in the office to fill out the form.

I will touch on something that is outside of the Minister's remit - assessment of need. It is one of the biggest difficulties I hear from families. It is often in the most stressful of cases that families come to their local politician to try to progress an assessment of need. It is deeply emotional because at the centre is a child. That is the bottom line. Children are not being given the entitlements. They face barrier after barrier to get the essential therapies and supports they so badly need. There are a number of examples. A manager in a CDNT in Cork told a family, "We are finding it impossible to source a psychologist to allow us to complete the assessments. We are continuing to explore all the options but we are not in a position to complete any autism assessment right now". A school in Cork informed parents it would move to either a three-day or four-day week due to a critical shortage of special needs assistants. These children depend on consistency and care provide in schools. I compliment the Minister of State, Deputy Michael Moynihan, on the progress he has made in rolling out essential school therapies but students face consistent barriers. I know this from experience. There were children in my classroom at second level who should not have been in a mainstream environment. The reason they were was there was such a backlog in assessment of need they were not given the opportunity to go to a special education needs setting. At the centre of this are children. I understand this is outside the Minister's remit. This Government must realise the extent of the problems families face.

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