Tom Clonan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for coming in again this evening. I thank Fine Gael for putting forward this motion. Care for our most vulnerable citizens is such an important topic. I am proposing two amendments, however. I have moved amendment No. 1 but I will speak to both amendments.

In the first amendment, I ask the Government to abandon the proposals set out in the Green Paper on Disability Reform put forward by the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, last year. It is an absolutely despicable document. It is outrageous. While proposing no other court of action, it suggests that 250,000 disabled citizens be medically assessed to categorise them on the basis of their capacity to work. These are children and adults who cannot get spinal surgery and who, as outlined by Senator Carrigy, cannot get appointments for physiotherapy or occupational therapy or get even the most basic treatments within the window of developmental need. The Government proposes that each of those citizens be medically categorised to establish their capacity to work. How offensive is it to a cohort of citizens in this country who are so poorly treated to submit them to a compulsory medical examination?

This measure has been cut and pasted from a discredited austerity policy in the UK that even the Tory Government in Westminster is beginning to dismantle and which has led to thousands of suicides among disabled citizens in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The University of Liverpool established the precise number of suicides. If you transpose it to the Irish population, it would be the equivalent of 600 disabled Irish citizens dying by suicide under this regime. It has to be stopped. If the Government thinks a tax on children's shoes would bring it into political disrepute, I guarantee that, if it persists with and pushes this Green Paper on disability, which terrifies disabled citizens, it will bring the Government into disrepute. I would advise anybody who harbours ambitions to be the leader of a party or perhaps to even to go to Áras an Uachtaráin to disassociate himself or herself from this absolutely despicable Green Paper. To call it a paper on disability reform beggars belief.

The second amendment has regard to the wording proposed in a Bill regarding Article 42B of the Constitution, which was debated without prelegislative scrutiny at committee level and under a guillotine last week. As this wording does not vindicate the rights of disabled citizens, I ask the Government to immediately - I mean right now - ratify all protocols of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, including the optional protocol.

Senator Seery Kearney asked what it is about Ireland and the attitude of people in the services towards our children. People in my community, both disabled people and carers, did not choose to be in this space. We are here by force of circumstance. However, the Ministers responsible have chosen to inhabit that space. Those people in the Health Service Executive who are promoted and gravitate into those areas choose to inhabit that space. All I can say about their attitude towards us is "My God." The Senator used the word "contempt". They have contempt for the rights of our children and young adults. The Minister of State and I have witnessed that on a call with a disability services manager. She has seen the contempt for the rights of my child.

The Minister of State said that care takes place behind closed doors. That is where the wording proposed in the constitutional referendum wants to keep us, behind closed doors, because it identifies the family as being the primary and exclusive provider of care and contains nothing to vindicate the rights of disabled citizens and carers, as set out in Article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. When you are behind closed doors, you are out of sight and out of mind. Nobody can hear you scream when you are in the community. The Minister of State talked about respite. As a family, we have had no respite over the last 20 years. In 20 years, we have never, even once, been away from our son. This has an impact not just on the disabled citizen, but on parents and carers.

Why is there contempt for our children? I believe it is because our children look different, sound different and move differently. I look at my son's hand, which is clawed as a consequence of having no physiotherapy, and I kiss each of his fingers. I listen to his dysarthric speech, which denies him the most powerful of instruments and is the result of a lack of speech therapy. I love his dysarthric speech and the way he talks to me but he is not valued as a human to the same extent as other categories of citizens in this Republic. That is for shame. In addition to all of these very noble aspirations, I ask the Minister of State to put her money where her mouth is, to vote for these amendments and to carry them out. I ask her to do that, to have ambition for our disabled citizens and to vindicate their rights. We should no longer have a charity model or a model of pity and the responsibilities of the family. Let the State now step up and vindicate the rights of this category of citizens.