John Dolan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is unfortunate that we have such a short time this evening for this debate. Given our late start, we have 60 minutes, with our time topped and tailed by the Minister of State. I ask that the Seanad might be able to extend or come back to this matter fairly soon. I thank the Minister of State for being here and the Leader of the Seanad for making sure we could have this early debate.

I have no doubt but that Deputy Finian McGrath's heart is in the right place. I have no doubt but that the Minister of State wants very much to make it happen for people with disabilities. However, I do not have any trust in the national disability inclusion strategy. I set out my reasons for that on 26 September when we first had statements on this matter. This vehicle will not deliver what the Minister of State very clearly wants delivered. It will not do it. I critiqued it on that day and I can critique it again. I am happy to hear any other comments on it. The document before Members today, comprising three and a half pages, does not give me any solace that things have changed. I will use the word "trust". The Minister of State said he was let down and misled by officials in his Department. He said that publically a year ago. I put it to him last September; he did not respond to it. This document has no reference to ratification by the end of last year, even though it was published a month after the Taoiseach had committed to it.I disagree slightly with Senator Martin Conway in this regard, with respect. The Taoiseach intervened in the middle of June and said that even if the process had to be changed, it would happen by the end of the year. It happened in early March of this year. We will not quibble over that. He said that we had to change the process and it was changed.

I revert to the document before Members and the issue about the optional protocol. A commitment was given, and the Minister of State says that it would be met when the convention was ratified. It has now been changed. There is no rationale in this document as to why it has changed. We are doing it differently now. The Minster of State said that the optional protocol, which was to be ratified at this current time, will be ratified as soon as possible following completion of Ireland's first reporting cycle. When will the first reporting cycle be completed? When does the clock start? Has the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Coveney, gone to New York to sign the papers? Has the 30-day timeline started yet? It clearly has not. There are real issues here but no reason is set out as to why the optional protocol cannot be signed. This document comes from the Department of Justice and Equality. I suggest - I might be totally wrong about this - there is a divergence of view between that Department and the view and will of An Taoiseach. I do not wish to say this gratuitously but people with disabilities need an explanation, as do I. There is absolutely no reason why Ireland cannot now sign up to the optional protocol.

We need to get on with a number of practical matters very quickly. A budget is coming up. That budget, across all of the different Departments, has to have the smell, taste and bite of a budget that is about people with disabilities and their families and not just a package of this and that from one Department. Let us see, between now and the end of the year, if the pieces of legislation are put in place. I expect that the optional protocol can and should be dealt with now.

The Minister of State spoke about unemployment, and he mentioned it in his 2017 strategy. We are now two and a half years into the ten-year comprehensive employment strategy. The Minister of State's speech contained no figures to tell us how many people have been employed although we are one quarter of the way through the strategy.

He has spoken about people coming out of congregated settings. There are 1,200 people under the age of 65 in nursing homes in this country and that is a deprivation of liberty which does not require legislation to sort out. There were 3,919 people on the social housing lists in 2013. In 2016 it was 4,456. The number is going up. Poverty is increasing. There is no sense in this document of the scale of what has to be dealt with or a resolve to actually deal with it. I acknowledge we are told about a number of very useful and important initiatives.

I wish to correct the Minister of State when he stated, "To put it another way, the convention provides that people with disabilities should have the same rights as everyone else". That is incorrect. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of December 1948 stated that disabled people are the same human beings as anybody else. This convention intends to sort out something that has not been sorted out by states across the world for 60 years. It is about making the human rights of disabled people real, including rights to transport, employment, housing and education.