Results 1-20 of 67 for carer's speaker:Tom Clonan

Seanad: Disability (Personalised Budgets) Bill 2024: Second Stage (25 Jun 2025)

Tom Clonan: ...is standard practice in all other jurisdictions. It empowers a disabled person to take control over his or her own life. I will give an example. My son Eoghan, who is 23, is not allowed choose his own carers. He is not allowed choose the manner of his care or the means by which it is provided. That decision is abrogated to a civil servant who works in CHO 6. That person has chosen a...

Seanad: Disability (Personalised Budgets) Bill 2024: Second Stage (25 Jun 2025)

Tom Clonan: ...This Bill remedies that, and it is not something I dreamed up and wrote on the back of an envelope. It is based on 20 years of experience. It is based on all the correspondence with our community of carers and disabled citizens. It is based on every single consultation that this Government, the previous Government and the confidence-and-supply Government engaged in. It is...

Committee on Disability Matters: Progressing the Delivery of Disability Policy and Services: Discussion (11 Jun 2025)

Tom Clonan: ...It has been put to me that, as a parent, I should not speak to the lived experience of disability. Do the representatives accept, under the provisions of the UNCRPD, that not only do parents and carers have a right to speak to the lived experience of disability, they are actually mandated under the UNCRPD to do so? I also ask them to offer any thoughts they might have on why our...

Committee on Disability Matters: Progressing the Delivery of Disability Policy and Services: Discussion (11 Jun 2025)

Tom Clonan: Yes, but the specific question was whether the witnesses accept that carers and parents are mandated to speak to-----

Seanad: Nithe i dtosach suíonna - Commencement Matters: Care Services (29 Apr 2025)

Tom Clonan: ...Minister is currently instructing solicitors, senior counsel and barristers to fight the family in question – a single mother and her child, who was sexually assaulted while in the care of a State-provided carer, Avista. The Grace case, we were told, must never happen again. It is happening right now on the Government’s watch. Its members have all been informed. I...

Seanad: Disability Services: Statements (8 Apr 2025)

Tom Clonan: ...and campaigned hard for a wording that would have set back the rights of disabled citizens in this country by decades. It also would have set back the rights of women. Some 99% of unpaid carers are women and girls. My daughter, at 16, was toileting her 18-year-old brother as a result of the lack of personal assistant support and interventions. On the subject of respite, we have had no...

Seanad: Special Education Provision: Motion (26 Mar 2025)

Tom Clonan: ...you are disabled or have additional needs in Ireland, it would appear to be the case that you have less human value in the eyes of the State and of bureaucracy than other citizens. I say that as a father and carer to a beautiful young man who happens to be disabled. I see his fundamental human rights breached and abrogated every day in so many ways. When you hear a diagnosis and...

Seanad: Health (Scoliosis Treatment Services) Bill 2024: Committee Stage (19 Mar 2025)

Tom Clonan: ...are introducing this legislation on Committee Stage today is to force or compel the State and its agencies to do what is right. Let me tell the House what delayed and denied treatment looks like. I say this as a carer and parent to a young man who had spinal surgery for scoliosis in 2018. Like all the children on this list, his surgery was delayed. I say this as a public...

Seanad: Cathaoirleach a Thoghadh - Election of Cathaoirleach (12 Feb 2025)

Tom Clonan: ...that is nationwide and all over the UK, the United States, Canada and Australia. It is a big constituency. Those people elected me, but I do not act in their interests. I act with their authority to support carers and disabled citizens, who are all over Ireland. Some Senators are carers or will become carers, but every single one of them, according to the World Health Organization,...

Seanad: An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business (5 Nov 2024)

Tom Clonan: ...the Houses invest the same urgency and level of concern about the safeguarding of this young disabled woman as has been shown recently in respect of other vulnerable young people. As a parent and a carer, when you hand your son or daughter, whether they be an adult or a child, into the care of another, what worse case scenario can you imagine? If we do not speak for citizens like Louise...

Seanad: An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business (17 Oct 2024)

Tom Clonan: ...thank the Leas-Chathaoirleach. Brambles is a day and respite care service operated by St. Catherine's Association in Newcastle, County Wicklow. It is a service that is available for parents and carers of children and young adults with intellectual disabilities. I have to declare a conflict of interest here. My nephew, who has Down's syndrome, gets much needed daily respite in the...

Seanad: An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business (15 Oct 2024)

Tom Clonan: ...disabled citizens in the State who cannot get the services, supports, therapies and surgeries they need. It would take control away from the HSE and put it into the hands of disabled citizens and carers. I thank my colleagues in Seanad Éireann for signing the Bill, co-sponsoring it and supporting me. I got support from across the House from almost 30 of the 60 Senators, from all...

Seanad: Final Report of the Joint Committee on Autism: Motion [Private Members] (9 Oct 2024)

Tom Clonan: ...of correspondence from disabled citizens. In Ireland, the recurring themes are unmet need and families in crisis. I appreciate Senator Carrigy's investment in this issue. Like me, he is a parent and a carer for somebody with additional needs who just needs that little bit of scaffolding to allow them to live a full, autonomous life. However, we are behind the times. For us as a...

Seanad: Final Report of the Joint Committee on Autism: Motion [Private Members] (9 Oct 2024)

Tom Clonan: That is when my advocacy as a parent began because in Ireland, as a parent and carer and as a family who experience disability, you become de facto an advocate. I approached the line Minister at the time. I never got to speak to the Minister for Health. I would characterise the response then, in 2011, as one of hostility and quite confrontational. The attitude was one of “So, you...

Seanad: An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business (8 Oct 2024)

Tom Clonan: ...to prevent the report being furnished to Caitlin's mum. When we think of the Grace case, this is another example of a vulnerable young woman who was preyed upon while in the care of the State. As a carer and a parent, this is your worst nightmare: to hand your child over to the care of others and to have them violated in this way. This is David and we are Goliath. Given all of the...

Seanad: Budget 2025 (Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform): Statements (1 Oct 2024)

Tom Clonan: ...I share an intimate understanding of the challenges posed by disability. I do not for one moment doubt his integrity and commitment to the circumstances that confront disabled Irish citizens and carers. For carers and social protection for disabled citizens, the word "underwhelming" has been repeated to describe the budget over the past hour or two. I welcome the home care tax credit...

Seanad: Nithe i dtosach suíonna - Commencement Matters: Health Service Executive (25 Sep 2024)

Tom Clonan: ...an intellectual disability whose mum, Louise, placed her in the care of a section 38 service provider, Avista. While in their care, she was physically and sexually assaulted. As a parent and a carer myself, I know that to hand one's child - notwithstanding that he or she is an adult - over to the care of another person or institution and to have that child physically and sexually...

Seanad: Nithe i dtosach suíonna - Commencement Matters: Health Service Executive (25 Sep 2024)

Tom Clonan: ...it is personal to the Minister of State and I do appreciate the frankness of his reply. This case is emblematic of the moral injury experienced by people, our disabled citizens and community of carers. Even the last paragraph of this letter from the disabilities services manager refers to the fact that notwithstanding the allegations, the parent has indicated that they want their child...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Disability Matters: Aligning Disability Funding with the UNCRPD: Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (18 Sep 2024)

Tom Clonan: ...of State has made and her absolute integrity in everything she does with regard to disability. I thank the Minister of State for all the support she gives to disabled citizens, the community of carers and people who are neuro-divergent. I also thank her for the support she has given me in respect of my legislative initiatives and so on. I was very struck when Deputy Harris was...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Disability Matters: Rights-Based Approach to Day Services (Resumed): Discussion (19 Jun 2024)

Tom Clonan: ...a funding programme which is matched to this predicted forecast? How many facilities and accommodation centres are planned to be built in the next five years? For example, there are 170 ageing carers. I could be wrong but I imagine this somehow matches the 84 people who require urgent accommodation. This means accommodating a lot of people with ageing parents. I know from having lost...