Tom Clonan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will address the recent nursing home fees scandal and the withdrawal of disability payments to 12,000 people. I have the experience, as a parent and carer, of the day-to-day struggle to accessing citizenship in this Republic. It is very difficult. We are an outlier in European terms. This country is one of the worst places in the EU in which to have a disability or to be elderly, frail or vulnerable. I do not stand back from using those words. I have had the experience of lifting my adult son in the morning and looking after his intimate care needs. These are very intimate moments. It is quality time. We are trying to get him dressed and out of the house - to think there are able-bodied and well-educated people in positions of power who would conspire to suppress his rights. People in this Chamber may have had the experience of a parent who seemed invincible to them as though they would live forever. They might find themselves in that situation - lifting their parent on to the bed and looking after their intimate care needs. These are acts of love. This is not about the passive denial of somebody's rights. This is not about incompetence. This is about the proactive and premeditated use of the assets of the State to suppress the rights of our most precious citizens and I do not regard that as a sound strategy. I regard it as reprehensible. It violates the very social contract that exists between us as elected representatives and the people who vote for us and erodes public confidence in these Houses.

I ask Members to support me in calling for a full debate so that we find out precisely what happened here. If it is the case that the State's assets were used and mobilised and the State set its face against its own people, there needs to be accountability. I support the statement by the leader of the Labour Party, Deputy Bacik, to the effect that this could be a watershed moment. We could get something positive from this in looking at the role of the Attorney General. Government by the people should be for the people. Society is measured by the way it treats its most vulnerable citizens and if that is our measure, it is reprehensible.