David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I commend People Before Profit on tabling this motion and allowing us to have a debate on this important issue. I was first elected to the Seanad in 2011, and one of the earliest debates I took part in was on children's disability services. All the challenges that were outlined in that debate and all the asks that were made of the Government at the time are again contained in this motion because nothing much has changed. In fact, the only thing that has changed is the number of children waiting. Now almost 10,000 children are waiting for an assessment of need and 110,000 are awaiting essential therapies.

It is easy to see why parents of children with disabilities would be cynical of politics. In 2005, people who were elected to sit in this Chamber and legislate legislated to confer on children with disabilities certain rights under the 2005 Disability Act. Legally, a child has a right to an assessment of need within six months. We, the Oireachtas, decided, on behalf of the State, that this was a legal right that those children had and that that assessment of need would be full and comprehensive and would set out the health and the educational needs of the child. That never happened. Most children have not got their assessment of need within six months. As we know, and as the motion points out, every day parents are going to court to have their children's rights vindicated. We decided, as a political system, that we would confer rights on children with disabilities and then ignore them.

Worse than that, however, and in a very cynical way, the State then put in place a yellow-pack assessment of need, changed the standard operating procedure and pretended that it was reducing the waiting list, providing a lesser assessment of need. Again, the High Court examined that and said, "I am sorry, that is not the assessment of need under the Act." It set it aside, and what have we seen? The waiting lists have gone up since. That was very callous and was obviously not a way to treat people with disabilities.

I do not have much more time, so I will conclude by saying this. One could wallpaper this Chamber with the amount of debate we have had on disability services, but since 2005 we have failed those children.

Unless we take a rights-based approach and put the capacity in rather than trying to take shortcuts and deprive children of their needs, I fear we are going to have many more debates like the ones we are having here and fail many more children with disabilities.

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