Paul Murphy: Urges action on crisis in disability services

Thanks a lot Chair and thanks a lot to Sinn Fein for bringing this good motion. I actually haven't been able to be present for the debate until now because I was at an online meeting precisely with campaigners, a range of different campaigners on disability services of various sorts, parents, children with additional needs, parents of children with scoliosis who are being failed so very very badly by the state and disabled people themselves and I think what is brewing is a very very powerful alliance of all these groups who are and they're not small groups when you look at the number of people affected we're talking hundreds of thousands of people in this country and being very very badly neglected by the state but potentially a very powerful alliance being formed of these groups to demand what they deserve which is basic services that mean they are not disabled by society and that's the thing that's the political choices are made to disabled people and they're demanding that necessary provisions are put in place to ensure that that stops happening and I would say that these campaigners have won important victories and things are still very high hard you look at the incredible waiting lists over 100,000 children waiting for necessary interventions and so they're still being utterly failed but by coming together by campaigning important victories have been won and the scrapping of the green paper which was a horrific Tory style proposal was a victory for disability campaigners and organisations who came together and put enough pressure on the government to stop it and the fact that the government is saying we're going to to get the optional protocol ratified and that's a victory I think it's a victory for all those who have been campaigning I can't remember the amount I can't count the amount of times there have been protests outside the Dáil saying ratify the optional protocol that is an important victory and I do want to say that it would be better if the state protected people's rights in the first place to ensure that they're not violated because this the optional protocol is just one more tool is just one more tool in the hands of people who have already been let down being failed by the state to pursue their rights it's good that they will have that tool and the existence of that tool will put pressure on the state not to fail people in the way that they are failed but we know currently obviously families you know 24 25 families a month are go taking the state to court for the state failing to follow its own laws in terms of people's entitlements to assessment of of needs so if the government was doing its job there wouldn't be a need for anyone to take the state to court or to make an individual complaint under the optional protocol and the fact that these last resorts have become so vitally important is an indictment in itself of the government's total failure to protect the rights of disabled people Last Friday I hosted a public meeting in my constituency around disability services around disability services around disability services around the lack of access to appropriate school places for children with additional needs I actually despite the fact that I was nominally hosting it I couldn't be there because I had I had COVID but I spoke to people who were there was it was a packed public meeting and this is a feature the minister will will know that you know this is one of actually kind of the few issues that if you put a public meeting on around the country big numbers of people will come to because of just on the one hand the sheer number of people hundreds of thousands of people who are affected and on the other hand the profound impact that this has on people's lives and but a common theme that emerged from the meeting was that parents felt that parents felt that the state was effectively trying to wait them out trying to fob them off and fob them off until their children were 18 and aged out of education and at that point the state will effectively abandon them completely I mean it's it's striking now I presume it's the case for other TDs that in terms of you know individual cases that come to me probably the number one issue is homelessness and people facing eviction and so on but the number two issue is is parents of kids with additional needs who are just facing an absolute horror who have either just recently discovered and then are trying to guess what they need and then all of a sudden struck with the reality that this is a battle that they're going to have for years or parents who often have been in this situation for years already and are just kind of going through various bouts of trying to contact representatives trying to make something happen I mean it really I can't count the number of individual cases that I've spoken about in the Dáil people waiting literally years with nothing happening like I mentioned recently a case a woman who's first referred to local CD&T in 2018 and recently got an email to say we hope to deal with you at the end of 2025 you know and this is this is common these these aren't exceptions you know that is the reality of what's happening and is people are just being fabbed off the other aspect of of that that's the kind of CD&T HSE aspect but is that the other issue that people come to you with is their inability to find an appropriate school place for their children I mean we should have a special class in every school in this state but at the moment less than a third of the primary schools have autism classes and only 410 out of 710 post primary schools have autism classes in Dublin 24 you have a peculiar situation where I think you're about at the national average in terms of primary but then it collapses in terms of post primary so you have a situation where you just people are coming out of primary and not having an appropriate place and then we all know because of that you have 80 million euros being spent annually on bussing 20,000 pupils with disabilities out of the locality to special classes to special schools just unacceptable workable for the children for families from every possible way and I just would make the point that like these waiting lists and so on they're not an accident they're long by design it's a government strategy of penny pinching and of privatization by stealth to force people to go private because they can't bear to wait any longer Una Keatley from campaigns on scoliosis was making the point I was at the meeting there that you know people say to her if I was in your situation I'd go private and she said the only reason I can't go private is because you literally can't with a child with scoliosis and because you you can't pay for the ICU care in this country after an operation that is required and you can't take your child on a plane and it's difficult to take your child on a boat but that like illustrates the point that this is this is the situation I mean parents come to me all the time with children with additional needs who have like very very limited resources and are getting loans from parents or credit unions or wherever they possibly can in order to be able to just get some private uh private uh therapy but then in many cases you can't even get private therapy you have the money and you can't get access to the private uh therapists but like ultimately in my opinion all this comes down to political choices and political choices around resourcing we have this record 24 billion euro budget surplus and therefore if we're not providing the resources to have special classes in every single school to have the appropriate number of therapists and cdnts across the country to have appropriate therapists in the schools on the ground like that is ultimately a political choice and yet you're going to respond to that by saying well with a shortage of of these people that's that's true there's a question about planning but also then like show an intention now by massively increasing the number of places in uh colleges and so on and to deal with the some of the details of the the motion we we support at this motion and we think these motions what's outlined in the motion is is the bare minimum that any government that cares about disabled people and their families would take and we think a genuine left government would would do much more in our alternative budget we outline costed proposals for massive investment in the additional sna's special education teachers and extra clinicians that are needed to clear waiting lists for assessment and to ensure that no child in this country is left behind we outlined how the means test for carers allowance could be abolished 20 euro increase in disability payments proposed in this motion will be a start but it isn't enough to provide disabled people with a decent standard of living that should be theirs as a human right there is zero justification in a country with a surplus of 24 billion euros for anyone to be living in poverty especially any disabled person or for some or care or someone who is caring for someone with a disability what we propose in our alternative budget was to bring in a 50 euro a week cost of disability payment for all those on disability payments on top of increasing all weekly social welfare payments to 300 euros the government has research itself to show that simply being disabled in this country comes with substantial additional costs a lot of that verts back to the issue of the privatization of what should be public health and education services provided free at the point of use disabled people and their families are routinely forced to pay for private therapies to pay for assessments rather than being these being provided for free as part of a universal national health service thanks