Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I want to raise an issue that springs from a special joint committee meeting we held this morning, involving three committees, the Joint Committee on Health, the Joint Committee on Education and Skills and the Joint Committee on Employment Affairs and Social Protection. It was really impressive and I pay tribute to Senator John Dolan, who I believe initiated the meeting to talk about how we deal with disability and transitioning people from education to employment in a unified way, rather than in a siloed way. I will give a couple of the statistics that came from the meeting. The first one will really shock us. We were talking about the good unemployment figures yesterday, and rightly so, but 71% of adults of working age with a disability are out of work. It is absolutely staggering. In addition, 26.3% of adults with a disability live in consistent poverty. The figures are from the Disability Federation of Ireland and are absolutely stark. They tell us that we have completely failed when it comes to disability and policies of inclusion, and I say this in a non-party political way.

Inclusion Ireland makes a point which gets to the heart of the matter. They ask why we are spending so much money on putting young people with disabilities through an education system which does not see them as adults progressing into further education, training or employment, but as objects of charity to transition into our health and social services systems.This is a damning indictment of successive Governments' failure to address the matter and I am calling for a debate on it. There are people from all parties with important things to say on this, which is clear from the joint committee's meeting earlier. The idea of using a unified committee system has much merit. I pay tribute to Senator Dolan on this.

I am also raising a matter which is more delicate but which I must put it out there. It relates to the eighth amendment and the campaign for its repeal. I am fully respectful of people of different opinions. If their opinion is against repeal of the eighth amendment, we must listen to and respect that. I ask for respect for people such as myself who support repeal. Where I struggle is with the people who are hiding on this issue. As public representatives, all of us have a duty to indicate where we stand. The Fine Gael organisation in Limerick has gone into hiding on this issue. It is being openly discussed among the Together for Yes campaign in Limerick. If one is for or against, that is fine, but this is not a personal matter, it is matter of public health policy. As public representatives, we all have to say where we stand. I want to be very direct on this. I see my colleague, Senator Kieran O'Donnell, in the House. I ask him, on behalf of the people, particularly the women, of Limerick, to tell us where he stands on this issue. We will respect what he says but, he should tell us where he stands.