Tom Clonan (Independent)

I thank the Minister of State for coming in. I have heard nothing this evening to persuade me that there is any reason for delaying this for 18 months. I say that also in the context of a pattern emerging on the part of the Government to put a timed amendment on all legislation proposed by Opposition Members. I thought that, as a Chamber, we had a collegiality here that set us apart from the polarity we see in other parliaments, including across the water in Westminster and in Washington, and the vulgarity and the barbarity that flow from that. I have acted in absolute good faith. We have talked about expertise and legal issues. It was the top international legal firm in the city, one the Government regularly goes to for advice, that formulated this based on the Government parties' own work in the confidence-and-supply Government, in the previous coalition and to date. This legislation incorporates every single policy imperative and aspiration the Government has set out. The Minister came in here and read out a statement that, frankly, I found dispiriting in its paucity of reasoning to suggest that we must wait 18 months. In fact, everything the Minister said and all the contributions signalled the absolute imperative to make progress on this. Delaying it by 18 months is a retrograde step, and no expression of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused, which is what this is.

We will press this amendment to the amendment. This session is being watched by hundreds and hundreds of people in our community tonight, and my phone is filling with messages. When Members come in here and vote, they will very clearly signal where they stand on a Bill that many of them co-sponsored. This 18-month delay is not warranted, and to assert something does not make it so. It is Trumpian to simply assert something and therefore believe that that makes it so. Evidence is what makes something so. That is what separates us as a species, and that is what must distinguish us as parliamentarians in an era of untruths, non-truths and false narratives. At a time when a Cabinet colleague expressed concern about trust in politics, to present this set of arguments as set out in this three-page response, bland as it is, is simply not good enough. We will therefore press this amendment.

After all this, I must go home. Senator Gallagher, my good colleague and friend, somebody whom I admire, is right: we walk the walk. My guest in the Gallery, Katy, and I go home to a situation where we must walk the walk but, I am sorry to say, fight the fight every day, and it wears you down. We have to fight every day. It robs one of the anticipation of the future. The Minister of State was not here when I spoke about my other adult children. Where is the joy in not knowing from one day to the next who is coming or if anyone will come at all? In 20 years we have had not one day of respite. I say that to the Minister of State as a colleague here in Oireachtas Éireann - not one day. As a family, as a couple, we cannot spend time away from our son. This Bill remedies that, and it is not something I dreamed up and wrote on the back of an envelope. It is based on 20 years of experience. It is based on all the correspondence with our community of carers and disabled citizens. It is based on every single consultation that this Government, the previous Government and the confidence-and-supply Government engaged in. It is evidence-based.

We all have an opportunity to serve the people. I firmly believe that the pushback against this Bill, as indicated to me by the Minister, Deputy Foley, comes from Cabinet colleagues who have an ideological view that the State should not bear a financial burden in vindicating the rights of disabled citizens.That is wholly consistent with the fact that Ireland is an ableist State, for shame. We can do better than this. We need to do better than this. I ask my colleagues to support us and, as Senator Boyhan said, not to rely on an unethical partisan party line to inform existential action in the interests of our community. Go raibh maith agaibh.