Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Earlier this month, the Government announced funding of €16 million for 27 projects across the State, to be funded under the Ability programme. This programme provides supports to more than 2,600 young people aged between 15 and 29 years who have a disability. According to a Government press statement, the announcement was the fruition of a long period of planning, consultation and assessment by various Departments and Pobal. Initially it was planned to allocate €10 million in funding. This was subsequently increased to €16 million, supporting all 27 projects. I welcomed that increase.

One of the groups that applied for funding was a partnership consisting of the Bluestack Special Needs Foundation based in Donegal town, Inishowen Children’s Autism Related Education Limited, which covers the Inishowen Peninsula but also provides services to the wider Donegal area, and Extern.They came together in a partnership and they were one of the groups turned down for funding. iCare met Oireachtas Members in recent days and it has given us this map and put it online. It is a scandal that there are 27 projects, not one of which is north of Roscommon or Dublin. In my part of the world in Donegal, people are sick and tired of looking at maps like this when it comes to a range of health services, but these are disability services.

iCare is based in my home area of Inishowen and has been going for 18 years. It has had to raise every single cent it spends. It started off with six families and today it provides services to 105 persons with disabilities and their families. It delivers a huge service solely from fundraising. It has been turned down for funding only to discover, when looking to see where the money went, that nothing went north of Roscommon or Dublin. That is not to begrudge any of the organisations that got funding. I believe every single one of them deserved to get funding, but how can this be called a State-wide service for young people with disabilities when so many counties are missing? I am particularly angry about Donegal because we are isolated and we are denied access to health services in so many ways. So many of these maps are a line between Galway and Dublin, north of which nothing is provided to us.

I am asking that both the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection, Deputy Regina Doherty, and the Minister of State with special responsibility for disability issues, Deputy Finian McGrath, urgently review this. After all, in their own press statements they have acknowledged that they have increased the originally planned €10 million to €16 million. They need to increase it further. They need to make sure that no young person, whether they are in Donegal, Sligo, Leitrim, Cavan, Monaghan or Louth, is denied the equality of access and opportunity with which other young people with disabilities throughout the country are rightly provided.

This needs urgently to be reviewed. It is scandalous that two Departments, working with Pobal, in whose statements it says it has put extensive preparation into this, have allowed young people with disabilities in such a huge area to be left neglected and abandoned again. We will not stand for it and we demand a review and a reversal of the decision to limit the funding to €16 million. That is my call here today and I can tell the Minister of State that since this map has gone up on social media, it has gone viral. People are furious in my part of the world. The Minister needs to review this urgently and make sure the funding is provided. If not, there will be a battle on the Government's hands.