Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I move:

That Seanad Éireann:

-recognises the commitment of the Government to support citizens living with disabilities in our society;

-acknowledges that for the first time in the history of the State we now have a Minister with special responsibility for Disability Issues in Cabinet, ensuring that all Government decisions will have an input from a disability perspective;

-welcomes the decision by the Government to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to escalate the creation of a fairer and more inclusive society;

-acknowledges the significant increase in spending on disability support services that has taken place in recent years and welcomes the commitment to further increase this in the coming years;

-commends the increase in support and awareness across all Government Departments in the critically important area of sight loss in recent years;

-notes the Government’s awareness of the importance of providing increased supports in the area of sight loss in light of an aging population who will be faced with sight loss difficulties;

-concurs with the Government on the critical importance of early referral to available support services following diagnosis of sight loss to ensure early intervention, which will facilitate as seamless a recalibration and adjustment as is possible, and will lead to early access to necessary supports including mobility training, peer counselling and independent living skills;

-welcomes the provision of funding by the Government through the Acute Hospitals Division to establish the first ever Eye Clinic Liaison Officer (ECLO) across the Ireland East Hospital Group which began in Spring 2019;

-notes that since the establishment of the ECLO support service, the non-governmental organisations working in the area of sight loss have reported a dramatic increase in referrals to the programmes they run in training and adjusting to sight loss in the Dublin region;

-further notes the positive reaction to the establishment of the ECLO service from Consultant Ophthalmologists working in hospitals such as the Mater and Temple Street, who have stated publicly the benefits already experienced by their clients who have been diagnosed with sight loss;

-welcomes the results of a quality assurance exercise carried out with patients who have availed of the services of the ECLO which showed that 78% stated that they were much better informed on how to adjust to their new life challenge;

-calls on the Government: -to provide the necessary funding to place ECLOs in all Hospital Groups across the State as a top priority;

-to ensure all patients with a diagnosis of sight loss have the same awareness and access to information to avoid a situation where some have and others have not;

-to ensure all children who receive a sight loss diagnosis have equal and fast access to all after-care services, including mobility training and education which is best achieved by emulating what is being done in the Eastern Hospital Group across the country; and

-to indicate a timeline on when it will provide an ECLO in all Irish Hospital groups.

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Finian McGrath, to the Chamber. I am delighted taking he is taking this motion because, to be fair to the Government, it is the first time in the history of the State that we have a Minister sitting at the Cabinet table who has specific responsibility for matters to do with disability. Until the appointment of the Minister of State, responsibility for disability matters was all over the place. There was no coherent strategy, proper focus or person accountable for disability matters. The Minister for Health dealt with health matters, the Minister for Education and Skills with educational matters and so forth. Equality was dealt with by the Department of Justice and Equality.

I have been a spokesperson on disability since I was elected to the House in 2011. When motions on disability have been debated the House, they have been taken by a raft of Ministers. We now have a Minister with interdepartmental responsibility who is aligned to the Departments of Justice and Equality, Health, Employment Affairs and Social Protection and so forth. That joined-up thinking in government to give disability due recognition is very important.

Following on from that, the election of Deputy Leo Varadkar as leader of Fine Gael and Taoiseach of our country was another significant milestone. I, Senator John Dolan and others have spoken about the need for Ireland to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. In his first news conference as leader of Fine Gael before he became Taoiseach, Deputy Varadkar outlined that that was an absolute priority of Government. Ratification took place within the year. He made it happen. That is key. Ministers who are held accountable, from the Taoiseach down, can make things happen.

We have a long way to go in terms of sight loss in this country. It is still the case that in Ireland four out of every five people who go blind or lose their sight do so unnecessarily. A total of 80% of those who lose their sight would not if there was proper dedicated early intervention. That is a shame on our society and country, and we should stop it.

A high percentage of those who are older have compromised sight. Before I deal with the substantive issue of the motion at hand, I want to say that everybody over the age of 40 needs to have their eyes checked every year or two. People would have a pain in their leg or back checked. If people feel their eyes are getting tired, they will say that they are working too hard and will just take it easy. It is often the rock that people perish on.

When people have their eyes checked and then get a diagnosis, they are left on a waiting list. The sad reality is that the fourth longest waiting list in the country is for ophthalmic matters, including glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy or cataracts. More than 43,000 of our citizens are waiting for treatment. That feeds back to what I said. When people get proper early intervention, their eyesight can be saved and degeneration can be prevented. Time is critical. We often talk about the golden hour for accident and emergency situations, but time is golden when it comes to preventing sight loss.

A further shame on us all is the fact that in excess of 7,000 children are waiting to have their eyes checked and procedures carried out. It is critical that young people are seen as a matter of urgency to prevent sight deterioration. That is something we are not proud of and we need to deal with it urgently.

I acknowledge the presence in the Gallery of Professor David Keegan from the Mater Private Hospital who has made so much happen for people with sight loss in this country. He is a specialist in diabetic retinopathy. Outside of that he is a true advocate for people with sight loss. I also acknowledge Chris White, Kevin Kelly, a former colleague, and others in the Gallery, including my assistant, Aoife Watson, who did a lot of work on the motion.

The purpose of the motion is to deal with what happens when someone is diagnosed with sight loss. The UK has a well-established, well-oiled, well-functioning and proven system where there are eye clinic liaison officers in all of the main hospital groups and facilities where people are diagnosed with sight loss. When a consultant diagnoses any type of eye condition, he or she immediately refers patients to an eye clinic liaison officer who has contacts with various NGOs, including guide dog organisations, the Royal National Institute of Blind People, ChildVision, in the case of a young person, and sports or peer counselling. They help to make it as seamless as possible for people to make the transition to not having full sight. This gives them a quality of life and equips them with the independence we all enjoy, aspire to and deserve as citizens.

We are living in a society that has ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and respects and espouses the equality of all citizens. When somebody is hit with a diagnosis of sight loss, his or her whole world comes crumbling down. Imagine what it is like for a person to lose all or a lot of his or her sight, having been able to drive, read and navigate the world seamlessly and then to find him or herself in a situation where he or she is no longer able to do that.

A raft of supports are available to help people. The National Council for the Blind is doing pioneering work in terms of creating equality, setting up transport training centres, peer counselling and so on. The number of people who lose their sight but do not realise this type of work is being done is frightening. That is because the link between the medical profession and NGOs is not there. As I said, the system in England works exceptionally well, and the facts and statistics are there to back that up.

I give full credit to people like Professor Keegan and his team and others who have promoted this and campaigned for it for a long time. A new scheme - it is not a pilot scheme - was set up about 12 months ago in Dublin. It involves an eye clinic liaison officer, and I believe the person in the Mater Private Hospital with responsibility for this is in Gallery. The scheme will serve the Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital, Temple Street and a couple of other hospitals. The statistics for the scheme are phenomenal in terms of what the person has achieved. Referrals to NGOs have risen dramatically and the feedback from people who have used the service has been tremendous in terms of their mental health and immediate access to step down supports and services, retraining and so on.

It is shocking that people in Galway, Cork, Limerick and Waterford do not have this facility. The purpose of the motion is very simple. It acknowledges and supports what has been achieved in Dublin, and calls for it to be rolled out to the other hospital groups with eye clinics, such as Cork, where the Leader is from, Waterford, where the Acting Chairman is from, Galway and Limerick, where I am from. Thousands of our citizens are experiencing sight loss in regional areas and they do not have access to the eye clinic liaison officers that people in Dublin do.I hope that following the debate, the Minister of State, the Department of Health and the Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, will direct all the hospital groups to make the funding available within their budget to appoint an eye clinic liaison officer. Not only is it an essential link between the services and supports provided by NGOs and the medical profession, but it also saves time. In view of the quality of consultants in the country, many of whom I know because I have advocated on the issue for a long time, they spend time advising clients where to go and whom to talk to. It is done on an ad hocbasis. Some do it more than others, while some do not do it at all. For those who do, it would save a great deal of time and expense. It would mean they could see more patients in the knowledge that the patients they have referred to the eye clinic liaison officer would be well cared for and would receive support. The feedback that has come from consultants in Dublin, including from people such as Professor Keegan and his colleagues at the Mater Hospital, is fantastic. People are happier and more confident, and they now see a much brighter future of integration.

I spoke earlier about the 7,000 young people, including children, who are on waiting lists. We are building a children's hospital and spending an awful lot of money on it. I hope there will be an eye clinic liaison officer as a matter of form in the children's hospital. In fact, there should be an eye clinic liaison officer department there. Now is the time to do it and to set it in place. I was tempted to table an amendment to the Children's Health Bill to ensure such a step was taken by enshrining it in legislation but decided I did not have to do so because I do not question the motivation of my colleagues in government, whose hearts are in the right place. By 2021, I would like there to be an eye clinic liaison officer in all the hospital groups where there are clinics for people with sight loss. It is a no-brainer. It works throughout the world and in Dublin, and we should make it work in the rest of Ireland.