John Dolan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I do not know whether we are going from the ridiculous to the sublime or the sublime to the ridiculous. The Minister of State, Deputy English, gave a commitment yesterday that he would be happy to come to the House to deal with the disability aspects of Rebuilding Ireland. Can we formally invite him to do so, given he has stated his willingness to do this? In that regard, can we have a report from his Department setting out the progress being made on the motion on which this House unanimously agreed in July 2017 regarding housing for people with disabilities? That would be the prelude to a useful and informative debate here in the House.

Related to that, it is important and only right for me to wholeheartedly welcome the Government decision to have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities this coming March. I do not anticipate any difficulties with support from the Dáil to facilitate this as all parties and entities have been calling for this for some time. While there have been delays and missed timelines, I am only stating that this morning to make a point about the future, namely, there is a strong expectation that the Government will crack on with implementation across all the domains, given legislation is required in areas like housing, education, employment, access, transport, jobs and income supports. The coming budget should be a very strong marker that the Government is moving with intent in this direction. The Taoiseach and his Department must be the drivers of integrated and complementary action across the whole system.

On a final point, when the Government got stuck into the issue of unemployment, the Action Plan for Jobs was driven night, noon and morning from the centre of Government and from the Taoiseach. Every Department was being whipped on it and was being asked what was happening and how was it removing the blockages. That has been a success because it was a whole-of-Government project and it had that prioritisation. That is exactly what is needed to move this project and to get the best results from it. That is what I am asking the Taoiseach to do. Ireland can become the front runner, and I look forward to that. We were being slagged because we were the last in Europe but we can push ourselves forward fairly smartly with such an approach.