Tom Clonan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

In that case, I had better be quick.

I thank the Minister of State for coming to the House. I welcome the publication of the report and thank Senator Carrigy for all the work he has done on this and all my colleagues who have worked with him on it. His group was established prior to my election. I am delighted that all after that work, it has come to fruition today. I also thank the Minister of State for putting pressure on her colleagues in Cabinet to reach this agreement to fully ratify the optional protocol on the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It is a signal achievement on her part. Whenever the Government decides to go to the polls, that will be a long-standing part of the Minister's political legacy. I have no doubt that her political life will continue. These are two very positive developments and I welcome them. I also welcome our guests from AsIAm. It is emblematic that there is a coalition of people - people from civil society and politicians from all the political parties, from the Labour Party and Sinn Féin to Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party - in which everybody is on the same page in relation to our citizens with additional needs. However, we are 30 years behind the rest of Europe in this regard. Since being elected I have visited a number of parliaments in Europe and the UK to look at their legislation with regard to the fundamental human rights of disabled citizens, whether that be by way of neurodivergence or being elderly. The World Health Organization tells us that every single citizen, all of us here, will be disabled at some point and for an average of eight years in our lives. For a lot of us, that comes at the end of life but it also impacts people who are recovering from stroke, road traffic collisions or acquired brain injuries. We are about 30 years behind everybody else in that regard, legislatively, in not having a legal right to the treatments, supports and therapies that we have all enumerated here, be it in the school setting, a clinical setting or the social model, to allow us to live autonomous, happy and fulfilled lives in the community and in the political, cultural and economic life of the State.

I echo what previous speakers said about the concerns raised about PDS and the CDNTs across all of the CHOs. My constituency is countrywide; it is in England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Australia and Canada. I get a lot of correspondence from disabled citizens. In Ireland, the recurring themes are unmet need and families in crisis.

I appreciate Senator Carrigy's investment in this issue. Like me, he is a parent and a carer for somebody with additional needs who just needs that little bit of scaffolding to allow them to live a full, autonomous life. However, we are behind the times. For us as a family, the crisis really hit during the financial crash. I want to give a bit of a timeline here. When the financial crash happened, the Government that was elected in 2011 of necessity put in place austerity measures. Unfortunately, the most vulnerable people in Ireland were impacted disproportionately by those austerity measures. That is when my son's supports, little as they were, collapsed. If the Chair allows, I just want to finish this.