A household headed by a person with a disability was likely to be living below the poverty line, Labour's spokeswoman on equality and law reform, Ms Breeda Moynihan-Cronin, told the Dáil.
She said that 70 per cent of people with disabilities were unemployed. "There is no right to advocacy, no law relating to access, no means of redress when rights are ignored." Ms Moynihan-Cronin said 1,711 people currently living at home needed full-time residential service; 861 needed a day service; 1,014 need respite service and 462 people had no level of service whatsoever. There were nearly 500 people with intellectual disabilities effectively locked in psychiatric hospitals, many of them in appalling conditions.
She was introducing a Labour private member's motion calling for an allocation of an additional €35 million for new places for the disabled this year. The motion, which also demands that the revised Disability Bill be published, will be voted on tonight.
Ms Moynihan-Cronin said that there had been palpable shock among the community of people with disability when the Book of Estimates was published before Christmas. "Nothing of any significance had been allocated to the services on which many of them, and their families, depend."
The Minister of State for Health, Mr Tim O'Malley, said that additional revenue and capital funding of €327 million had been provided for intellectual disability and autism services between 1997 and 2002,which had provided about 1,700 additional residential places which were mainly based in the community. Between 1999 and 2002 about 465 extra dedicated respite places, as well as 2,950 new day places, were also developed.
He outlined other funding for various services, adding that waiting lists had continued to grow because of the demographic profile of the population group. The increased birth rate in the 1960s and 1970s had resulted in a large number of adults in their late 20s and early 30s requiring full-time residential services now.
On the Disability Bill, he said officials from his Department would continue to liaise with their counterparts in the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform over the coming months to provide any assistance necessary in finalising proposals for new legislation.
The Fine Gael spokeswoman on health and children, Ms Olivia Mitchell, accused the Government of abandoning those with an intellectual disability. "Can we accept that elderly parents cannot die with the peace of mind given by the certainty of good care for their disabled son or daughter?"
