State’s responsibility to people with disabilities must go beyond issuing a social welfare cheque – Harris

Fine Gael Wicklow TD, Simon Harris, has today (Tuesday) said that it is high-time that we radically alter how the State interacts with people with disabilities. Deputy Harris added that the State must recognise that this relationship must go much further than the simple administration of a social welfare payment.

“For far too many years, the State has adopted a laissez faire type approach to people with disabilities, wrongly thinking that its moral and legal obligation was met by issuing disability allowance payments and outsourcing the delivery of services to a variety of organisations. This is a viewpoint that is completely out of step with any modern country and with the needs and wants of people with disabilities.

“As we continue to bring about economic recovery in this country, we need to see people with disabilities as part of this recovery, just like every other citizen. We need to ask ourselves whether we are doing enough to help people with disabilities access the workforce? What mechanism have we in place in terms of supported employment? Are we enabling people with disability to fulfil their potential and make their contribution to society or are we continuing to side-line these people by failing to put structures in place to help them access the workforce and pursue the career of their choice?

“We also need to look at how we fund services for people with disabilities and move towards fulfilling the commitment in the Programme for Government to introduce personalised budgets. We must put the days of providing block funding grants to service providers behind us. Instead, we must empower people with disabilities to choose the services they want, with adequate State support.

“This cannot all be done overnight, but I truly believe we must radically reshape the relationship that the State has with people with disabilities and stop reducing every debate about people with disabilities to social welfare payments. As citizens, people with disabilities deserve better than that. True economic recovery must enable everyone to fulfil their potential.

“We have made some progress in the disability area in terms of inspections of residential services, the drafting of the Assisted Decision Making Bill, the new policy research on special needs education and an audit of Section 38 organisations. We must now build on this progress and redouble our efforts.”

ENDS