John Dolan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

We had the great news yesterday from Government that the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is being ratified. Article 19 states, "Persons with disabilities have the opportunity to chose their place of residence or where and with whom they will live on a equal basis with others." That is something the Government is committed to, and it has said it is going to ratify it. It will ratify it in a number of weeks. This has to be in place this year, otherwise we are being sold a pup. I do not believe we are, but the work has to be done on it.

On 13 July 2016, every party and entity unanimously agreed to a motion that sought to confirm that the Government's action plan on housing would include specific commitments to delivering housing for people with disabilities, that it would provide an annual update from local authorities of the number of social housing units and would ensure that housing projects supported by public funding, including Part V, would provide a percentage of pre-planned and reserved housing units, etc. There was a request that the Joint Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government would draft a work programme which would routinely consider and review Government progress. It is 18 months since that was done. That needs to be picked up on, and I believe the House should have an update on that fairly soon.

The week after that motion, Rebuilding Ireland was announced. There were a few paragraphs in it about people with disabilities, and it covered the strategies for those people. What I said then was very telling, and I believe it is coming home to roost now. We have known since 2013 that there were 3,319 people with disabilities on the social housing list. That information was gathered through the local authorities and was provided to the Minister of State's Department. There was not even a mention of those 4,000 people in it.