Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael)

I intend to share my time with Senator Donohoe. I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Devins, for being in the House. Informally he told me he loves his job. We can make this a great country for people with disabilities if we work together and listen to people with disabilities because they best know their needs. This is not a great country for people with disabilities. I will touch on education and employment in particular. To be given a fair chance or a level playing field people with disabilities need appropriate, timely intervention and various forms of assistance. Special educational needs exist on a continuum from mild to severe and similar adaptations need to happen in the workplace to make disabled people more employable.

What schools offer to children with disabilities is highly problematic and a bit of a joke. I know this because I work in those schools and have done so for many years. One third of our young people with disabilities aged from 15 to 19 drop out of school compared with one quarter of the rest of the population. Why? Senator Fitzgerald has touched on some of the reasons. The National Educational Psychological Service, NEPS, is haphazard. Just 1,303 of our primary schools out of a total of 3,200 have a NEPS service. At second level 456 out of 720 schools have a NEPS service. Psychological services are not in place to provide the adequate and timely assessments for children.

Autism care is a joke. It is entirely dependent on parent action. Before St. Patrick's Day I told the Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Hanafin, research is vital to track approaches that are successful for children with autism. Speech and occupational therapy for children with autism is entirely as a result of private funding sources. For example, Claddagh national school in Galway fund-raises to pay an occupational therapist €642 for one day's work. Leaving children with severe behavioural and communication problems without speech and occupational therapy is criminal. The Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs Act needs €397 million to be implemented. No appeals process is operational because the Act has not been implemented.

I read the Government's amendment. There is a great deal of legislation but none of it has been implemented. We have a real difficulty in that the assessments available by law are available only to those under the age of five. Until we embrace the principles of non-discrimination, inclusion — which means no cherry picking and exclusion of children with special needs by schools — and equal opportunity for all in education and employment across society, there will be no fair play for people with disabilities.

To achieve this in law the Government needs to ratify immediately the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The Minister of State might give the timeframe for that. We signed it last year. The 20 governments across the world which have ratified it are bound by law to give fair play to people with disabilities. Some of our EU partners such as Hungary and Spain have ratified it.

One of the main points about which I want to talk to the Minister of State is the need for the individualisation of service delivery and to move away from the old model we have been using. Service providers such as the HSE and the Brothers of Charity have become highly inefficient. The Comptroller and Auditor General's report is highly critical of this and my understanding is that the Government is too. Having spoken to many disability groups and representatives from NUIG, which specialises in this area, it is clear that we should be aiming for a new model of service delivery which will be person centred. Those groups and representatives have asked me to ask the Minister of State if he is committed to that.

I am proposing a more flexible approach so that people with disabilities, following an assessment of their needs, would hold their own budget. This would be radical for Ireland. In the United States of America at the moment, this is called the ticket to independence, whereby a person with a disability literally shops around to meet his or her own needs. In Ireland, on the other hand, we have a totally different system. I just met representatives of Muscular Dystrophy Ireland who told me that 92 out of a total of 478 people with muscular dystrophy in this country have no physiotherapy. One fifth of those with this condition have no physiotherapy. A 17 year old with muscular dystrophy was told that there was no point in having physiotherapy because he would never walk again. What hope is that to give him and his mother? Physical stimulation is vital for this young man so his mother asked for a massage chair to stimulate her son's muscles. The chair costs €1,700 but the HSE has refused to fund it.

Currently, the HSE is contacting every user of Invacare wheelchairs, which were distributed through the old health boards, to tell them that they are no longer covered in the event of an accident. At the same time, however, the HSE will not provide these people with another wheelchair. The executive is further disabling people with disabilities. I urge the Government to get rid of the HSE.

People with disabilities are not protected in law. At present, no assessments are available to people over five years of age in this country, so the law is no good to them. Furthermore, the HSE is completely failing people with disabilities. It is wasting our money and has proved yet again that it is ineffective. If the budget was in the hands of the 17 year old to whom I referred, does the Minister of State not think he would buy his own chair, appropriate to his own needs?

Is the Minister of State committed to a more flexible and person-centred delivery of service for people with disabilities? We must break down the monopolies in the current method of service delivery. I ask the Minister of State to answer my questions and look forward to his reply.