John Dolan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Patrick O'Donovan. To get straight to the point, right now I would be calling this plan "Ireland 2040 - Our Plan minus 643,000 citizens with disabilities". There is not much, if any, consideration of them. Let me go through it. On the last day he spoke, the Minister of State said:

We want to see the country developed as a whole. We want to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to rear a family, have a home and job in their local area, and provide that opportunity for themselves and future generations.

That is ambitious and optimistic. My concern is that it does not include people with disabilities.

Let us take the jobs issue. Some 31% of people with disabilities are in employment compared to over 70% of people who are not disabled. To take housing, the social housing list from the Department in 2013 was 3,919 but when it did its survey in 2016 it had gone up to 4,450, an increase of 14%. When we look at the housing adaptation grant, the level of grant is extremely low and the means regime then comes in and starts to shave that away. That is not fit for purpose to support people. If we think of young families where a child has been born with a physical condition, the family needs to be able to expand the home they have, or they will be looking to move. Some 1,200 young people with disabilities are in nursing homes who should be living independently or in some other kind of community facilities.

With regard to people with intellectual disabilities, it has gone the other way. Provision of accommodation for people with intellectual disabilities in the past ten years has decreased by almost 2.5%.Housing in accommodation provided by support funding has gone down by nearly 7%. The number of people with intellectual disabilities being supported by their family in a family home increased by almost 20% in that time. The trends are going against us, there are no two ways about it.

I will refer to transport. With Bus Éireann, one has to give two days' notice and one still cannot be sure of getting the right service. DART has a pilot scheme in Dublin which aims to bring the waiting time down to four hours. Irish Rail requires 24 hours' notice, and not one carriage on one train has its own accessibility functions. Rather than retrofitting, the company relies on manually operated ramps, and they are often forgotten. The availability of rural transport is a huge issue for everybody and there are also issues of accessibility. Do not get me started on taxis.

People with disabilities are way down the list when it comes to the level of education that they have compared to their able-bodied peers. I am dealing with a case at the moment, where a further education institute which I will not name actually said to a young woman in a wheelchair that it would not provide a hoist. The institution has accessible toilets. Its management did not consider that they should provide a hoist so that she could use those facilities. Considering jobs, transport, access, housing, poverty and education, we still have big issues, and I do not see any hope or succour in what I read in this plan.

In the early part of his presentation in this House during his previous appearance, the Minister of State said:

The plan is based on costed and prudent projections of growth for 2% over the period 2022 to 2027. That is important bearing in mind, and we have said this both here and elsewhere, the shocks that could potentially be out there on the horizon.

Let us be clear about one thing. There is no shock around the outstanding needs of people with disabilities in this country. I will make two points. The programme for Government committed to ratifying the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. That was done two months ago. Now it is time to get on with the work. There is no shock or surprise there. We have committed to getting on with the work. The Central Statistics Office, CSO, has estimated that our population increased by 4% from 2011 to 2016. The population of people with disabilities has increased by twice that. There are more people living with disabilities; people are living longer, and living with more severe disabilities.

On page 92, we find reference to disability services. The document notes that the NDP will continue to support the capital programme for the purchase and adaptation of houses. I have already outlined that the trend is going in the opposite direction. We are not keeping pace, never mind making improvements.

To conclude; demographics are going against us. The provisions made in this plan are very weak. Its provisions for housing still will not keep us standing still, never mind moving forward. There is no reference to the UNCRPD and the whole raft of articles to do with housing, employment, transport, etc. I am sorry to say that, and I hope the Minister of State will be able to come back sooner rather than later to show us some ambition in this plan to make sure that over the next ten or 20 years things will be put right for people with disabilities.