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Holly Cairns Successive governments have neglected Ireland's disabled people - we must do better

The Social Democrats TD says Ireland’s record on caring for disabled people is entirely lacking.

TODAY IS INTERNATIONAL Day of Persons With Disabilities, an occasion on which we are urged to promote the rights and well-being of disabled people.

This advocacy is especially important in this country, where the rights of disabled people are continually ignored, undermined and, oftentimes, fully erased.

The evidence, for our shameful treatment of people with disabilities, can be found wherever you care to look.

Supply of basic services

First, let’s examine transport. The ability to easily move around is something most of us take for granted. That isn’t the case for disabled people. In fact, the State has actively hindered people’s ability to do so.

Back in 2013, two schemes – the Motorised Transport Grant, a payment of up to €5,000 for those who needed to buy or adapt a car to retain employment, and the Mobility Allowance, a payment for those who could not walk or use public transport – were abruptly closed.

These schemes provided a vital lifeline for disabled people, allowing them to travel to work, go shopping and take part in normal community life. In recognition of this, the then Fine Gael and Labour government was adamant that any closure would be brief and replacement schemes would quickly follow. Nearly a decade later, that has yet to happen and there is no indication of when those replacement schemes will materialise.

Ombudsman Peter Tyndall, in a report last month, was highly critical of the failure of successive governments – all Fine Gael-led – to replace these essential schemes. In a blunt assessment, Mr Tyndall said the reason for this failure to act was an unwillingness “to make the investment that is necessary”.

This failure to provide basic transport supports does not just increase the isolation of disabled people. It has very real impacts on their ability to work and move out of poverty. Irish people with disabilities have one of the lowest rates of employment in the entire EU – just over a third of working-age disabled people have a job. Shockingly, Ireland’s rate of employment amongst disabled people is just half the European average.

Uphill battle

It should therefore be no surprise that those with disabilities are more than twice as likely to experience poverty and deprivation as those without. It doesn’t have to be like this. A 2017 ESRI report found that if government policy were to facilitate the employment of people with a disability, an additional 35,600 disabled people could join the workforce.

The State’s failure, to meet its obligations to disabled people, is particularly stark when it comes to the 1,300 people aged under 65 who are being inappropriately housed in nursing homes.

Disability Federation of Ireland head of policy, Dr Joanne McCarthy, has said the practice of housing disabled people in residential care settings, rather than providing the home support they need to remain living in the community, is “a national disgrace”.

Try to imagine, for a moment, how it must feel to know that your own government would prefer you to waste away, inside a nursing home, rather than provide meagre supports to help you live a full and productive life? Consider the despair people endure on a daily basis, for just one reason. They have a disability and the State’s response is to lock them away.

As a member of the Oireachtas Disability Matters Committee, who regularly hears from disabled people about the myriad ways the State is failing them, it is difficult not to get angry when discussing this subject. The State fails disabled people at every stage of life – childhood, adulthood and old age.

Lack of political will

For children, even getting assessed can often seem like an impossible task. Under the 2005 Disability Act, children have a legal right to an assessment of need within six months of an application being submitted – a deadline that was rarely met. Instead of working to meet this target, the HSE has now revised the entire assessment of needs process.

Instead of children receiving a multi-disciplinary and comprehensive assessment of needs, what they are now entitled to is a 90-minute evaluation by two physicians. This speeds up the assessment – and also happens to protect the State from legal action from families – but it does not meet the needs of children who need targeted interventions and support.

Earlier this year, a survey by the Psychological Society of Ireland of its members found that 89pc of those who had conducted an assessment, using the updated procedure, believed it did not assist children in having their needs met in a timely manner while 95pc said the new process was not fit for purpose.

It should be clear that disability services have never been a priority – for this government, or any other government. Too often disabled people, their families, or carers have to fight to receive and maintain access to services they have a right to. When they highlight these situations those in positions of power have been content to either pay lip service to their demands or ignore them.

Instead of issuing a bland press release, if the government wants to do something significant to mark today’s date, there is one option. It could immediately ratify the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).

Ireland was disgracefully the last EU country to ratify the CRPD in 2018 but failed to sign the Optional Protocol then or since. This means that individuals or groups, whose rights under the Convention are breached, are unable to hold the government to account for any failure to uphold their rights.

The government has claimed it needs to do more work before signing the Protocol, but this is merely a delaying tactic. There is nothing stopping the government from doing that today – and ensuring the rights, contained in the Convention, are meaningful rights that the government is compelled to uphold.

Holly Cairns is a Social Democrats TD for Cork South-West. She is the party’s spokesperson for Agriculture, Food and the Marine.

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    Mute Paul Whitehead
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    Oct 27th 2021, 7:27 AM

    Great news for the children of the world. Get this miracle vaccine and help stop the spread of covid.

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    Mute Roy Dowling
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    Oct 27th 2021, 7:31 AM

    @Paul Whitehead: miracle vaccine??. Rushed vaccine that my kid won’t be getting. Not enough is known about long term effects 10 year so down the line.

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    Mute Conor Brady
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    Oct 27th 2021, 7:33 AM

    @Paul Whitehead: It took Covid two years in the US to kill as many children as the flu did there in 2018 alone (references available on request). Covid killed 26 kids in the Uk in 2020. 19 of those kids were desperately ill beforehand. 7 were healthy. In a nation of 14mil kids, that is not a risk to base any sort of policy on. To suggest children are at risk any more than normal is completely misleading, fear-inducing nonsense. With zero long term safety data to go by, can we not just leave the vaccines for the at-risk??? Or, dare to dream, the at-risk who are yet to be vaccinated in poor countries who we know are dying for want of them?

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    Mute Mac Muinteoir
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    Oct 27th 2021, 7:40 AM

    @Conor Brady: you can if you want.

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    Mute Kevin Thompson
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    Oct 27th 2021, 7:43 AM

    @Conor Brady: how many kids were in hospital from Covid?

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    Mute Lee King Buckett
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    Oct 27th 2021, 7:55 AM

    @Roy Dowling: if nobody took a vaccine that didn’t have a 10 year track record then we would still be dying of whooping cough, polio and a host of other things.

    There come times in our history where something occurs which is sufficiently serious to warrant a trust in scientific and medical progress for the good of humanity as a whole.

    Large corporations and governments don’t have anything to gain from killing off our kiddies – they kind of need them if they are to continue to stay in business.

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    Mute Francis Mc Carthy
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    Oct 27th 2021, 8:16 AM

    @Roy Dowling: They say that the worst side effects will happen 70yrs or so down the line. Yikes!

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    Mute Francis Mc Carthy
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    Oct 27th 2021, 8:19 AM

    @Conor Brady: one of the reasons that they will be vaccinating young children will be because of anti-vaxxers like you @@ But of course, you are too blind to see that.

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    Mute barry moore
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    Oct 27th 2021, 8:22 AM

    @Francis Mc Carthy: who is they the anti vaxers with no training other than how to YouTube

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    Mute Sarah Lou
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    Oct 27th 2021, 8:33 AM

    @Francis Mc Carthy: I am annoyed at engaging but what about his post says he is antivax. I am fully vaccinated, even had the flu vaccine myself after the covid vaccine and have literally had all vaccines available to me in my lifetime…. As have my children. But I agree with Conor here. One of those studies was 2 months the other was 2.5 WEEKS for the 5-11 year group. The documented death rate in the age group is something like 0.0005% and that is assuming every case of covid in that age group is documented. Presently for adults the research is showing a 4.5 month life span of efficicenty for the adult vaccine (again absolutely i will get the booster) but are we doing to repeatedly vaccinate 5 to 11 year olds for an illness that is currently not high risk to them? Would vaccinating countries with less than 10% of their adult population vaccinated who are literally dying waiting for it not be the best thing for the world?? I mean I just don’t understand this oh anti vax anti vax mantra. I personally would call conors post the most educated one here.

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    Mute John
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    Oct 27th 2021, 8:44 AM

    @Roy Dowling: That makes 2 of us, my daughter won’t be getting it.

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    Mute Francis Mc Carthy
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    Oct 27th 2021, 8:56 AM

    @Sarah Lou: hmmm, first of all, Conor is anti-vax. Also, just because you don’t see the virus as a danger to children, they are transmitting it back into their and other people households. Hope that helps.

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    Mute Sarah Lou
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    Oct 27th 2021, 9:34 AM

    @Francis Mc Carthy: compelling and all as the argument was…. No it doesn’t help at all. They are bringing home to their vaccinated households. There are of course kids in every avenue that will be more vulnerable and should consider vaccination but your argument that kids should be mass vaccinated to protect already vaccinated adults does not stack up. Equally…. I hope that helps.

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    Mute Tom Doyle
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    Oct 27th 2021, 1:05 PM

    @Sarah Lou: I will take it that you agree that the data has proven that it is the over 60′s & the immunocompromised that are at most risk from covid-19 and that the vaccines went and gave them protection from the covid-19 and from the Alpha variant yes? Has those odds risen since highly contagious Delta variant came to our shores ? The fact of the matter is that the less chance of the delta variant mutating among the non vaccinated ( children included) then the less chance of vaccine evading variants. Hope that helps you even more.

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    Mute David Van-Standen
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    Oct 27th 2021, 1:28 PM

    @Paul Whitehead: This “miracle vaccine” was originally created in 2018 by the Pfizer BioNtech collaboration as flu vaccine, the reason was to produce a cheaper, more profitable alternative.

    “Innovative vaccine approaches are urgently needed to provide improved protection against seasonal flu, and to respond rapidly and in quantity to pandemic influenza threats. mRNA vaccines offer a novel approach to code for any protein or multiple proteins, and the potential to manufacture higher potency flu vaccines more rapidly and at a lower cost than contemporary flu vaccines.”

    Does that “miracle” from 2018 sound familiar?

    https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180815005735/en/BioNTech-Signs-Collaboration-Agreement-with-Pfizer-to-Develop-mRNA-based-Vaccines-for-Prevention-of-Influenza

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    Mute Sarah Lou
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    Oct 27th 2021, 1:34 PM

    @Tom Doyle: Tom do you think we live in a vacuum or a bubble?? some continents are at 10% vaccination TEN percent that is 90% unvaccinated in their adult population and you are concerned that the children, many of whom have a level of naturally acquired immunity already, are going to cause the new variant and not the largely unvaccinated continent?! where are the humans all gone. people are literally dying because they have no access to this vaccine and people on here calling out for kids to be mass vaccinated to protect adults who are vaccinated or using tenuous examples of potential situations. The facts are we have one of the most vaccinated adult population in the world, noone is appreciating how privileged we are and want to grab grab grab taking away from those who need it most. Stop seeing Ireland as the only place in the world and start thinking about the human race in general.

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    Mute Fiona Fitzgerald
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    Oct 27th 2021, 3:24 PM

    @Sarah Lou: Agree with you that it’ll be a lot better when everyone has an equal chance to be vaccinated. I’m glad to see the USA is back in COVAX for that. The world’s at 37% fully jabbed and 49% partly; which is great. I feel it’s a case of masking up before handing out PPE to others – or it defeats the purpose – and we do actively support COVAX.

    But all infectious outbreaks turn into a mostly childhood illness after several years.

    It’s always the unprotected youngest generation who catch it in the next wave.

    Delta’s contagious enough for now. Is it not best to keep on top of the spread as it mutates, not export it? Ireland really doesn’t have a great healthcare system.

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    Mute Sarah Lou
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    Oct 27th 2021, 3:35 PM

    @Fiona Fitzgerald: Ideally we would do something to fix the healthcare system which would prevent the deaths of many people, allowing us to export the vaccine to those who need it saving even more lives. I cant believe people now want to mass vaccinate the kids to protect the health system.

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    Mute Paul Whitehead
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    Oct 27th 2021, 7:06 PM

    @Conor Brady: The vaccine is safe. Close on 7 billion doses administered.. The 4.5M deaths we have seen worldwide are from covid and not vaccines.

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    Mute Paul Whitehead
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    Oct 27th 2021, 7:07 PM

    @David Van-Standen: It has saved millions of lives – therefore it is a miracle vaccine.

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    Mute Tom Doyle
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    Oct 28th 2021, 7:28 AM

    @Sarah Lou: nice try, but no puff of the cigar for you. We’re talking about vaccinating a small % of the Irish population to help get the Delta variant under control in our own country.

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