Averil Power (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank all those who contributed to the debate. As I said at the start, this is an issue that should cross party lines. I appreciate that members of all parties feel strongly about the need to protect services for people with disabilities. I had hoped, when we tabled this Private Members' motion last week, that there would not be a Government counter-motion and that we would all be able to agree to the motion. When writing it, I went to great lengths not to include anything in it that I thought would be difficult for Members of other parties to support. That is why all it does is "calls on the Government to provide the appropriate funding and services necessary to honour all its commitments to people with disabilities". I did not include anything political and kept it as basic as I could because I did not want to put other Members in a difficult position where they would feel they could not support it. Therefore, I was disappointed to see that there was a counter-motion, as well as being disappointed with some of the language used in it.

Given that the counter-motion has been tabled and will be put to a vote, I want to explain why from our perspective we cannot support it. It denies the fact that cuts have been made to education. Although the total number of special needs assistants remains the same, as the Minister of State said, I point out that, owing to rising enrolments, this is an effective cut, regardless of how the Government wants to sell it.

The Government amendment also points out that the Government has "protected the numbers of resource teachers" when there has been a 15% cut in the number of resource teaching hours. It is difficult, therefore, for me to support this.

I had hoped we would all be able to take the position of acknowledging the reality that cuts had been made in recent years and agree that this area should be protected from further cuts in the budget. I regret that this does not seem to be the case. That is why we will have to push our motion to a vote and also why we cannot accept the Government's counter-motion. The reality is that people with disabilities have suffered greatly, as Senator Mary Ann O'Brien so eloquently pointed out in a quite upsetting way in actually putting before the House the reality of these cuts and the way they have affected people personally. That can sometimes be lost in overall numbers or when one is saying the overall budget has been protected. Because individual sectors have been hit - I outlined the impact on St. Michael's House services - the reality is that the personal experience of people with disabilities has deteriorated greatly in the past two years.

As I said, I regret that we will not agree to the counter-motion, but I appeal to Fine Gael and Labour Party Members, even if they are going to vote against the motion, to use the next couple of weeks to reach out to Ministers and argue that the disability sector should be protected from other cuts. There are fairer ways of making savings. I hope these Members will use their influence to ensure we will not end up in a similar situation this year to that on the Social Welfare Bill last year and that we will see off cuts in this area from the start.