Government has abjectly failed people with disabilities, says Louth TD

The Dáil resumes this week with a focus on the “abject failure of government to positively improve the lives of people living with disabilities,” Sinn Féin Louth TD Ruairí Ó Murchú has said.

With TDs returning to Leinster House on Wednesday, Sinn Féin held a two day think in at a hotel in Dun Laoghaire last week, with disability issues taking centre stage, the Louth TD revealed.

Deputy Ó Murchú is the party’s disability spokesperson and two major planks of government policy on disability will come under the spotlight immediately, with a debate on the newly launched Disability Strategy and a Sinn Féin motion on special education places on the agenda.

The Dundalk TD said there will be continued emphasis on the “abject failure of government” in key disability areas and said the government’s Disability Strategy contained ideas but absolutely no delivery detail.

 He said the party hosted autism campaigners Cara Darmody and Rebecca Meehan and heard powerful and heartbreaking testimony from scoliosis campaigners Gillian Sherratt and Stephen Morrison, the parents of Harvey Morrison Sherratt who died earlier this summer.

Deputy Ó Murchú said: “The think-in provided an opportunity to hear from autism campaigners about the huge delays there still are for autism assessments and therapies. Currently, people have a right to get an assessment of need within six months of referral and the government has indicated that it could change the legislation and there is deep concern about what this would mean for one of the only rights, unvindicated and all as it is.

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“We heard from Rebecca how there are still problems between the Department of Education and schools when it comes to delivering autism classes in a timely way and we heard from Cara about the need for continued pressure to be brought to bear on the government in order to ensure the assessment of needs are done quickly and that the therapies recommended in the reports are provided, whether that’s through the disability network teams or through schools-based therapies”.

He said that all those present at the think-in were ‘deeply moved’ by the bravery shown by Harvey’s parents who “are advocating for other children at a time of unimaginable grief to get a public inquiry and to ensure there are changes to the system that seems to constantly fail these young patients.”