DFI Raise Unsustainable Pressures on People with Disabilities to New Disability Ministers

DFI met with the new Minister for Children, Disability, Equality and Integration, Roderic O’Gorman and the Minister of State for Disability, Anne Rabbitte yesterday. It was a very productive meeting which focused on a range of issues including:

• The unsustainable pressures on people with disabilities, families and services. 
• Keeping disability on the agenda at cabinet and across all Government Departments. 
• Getting the Joint Oireachtas Committee on United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UN CRPD up and running early. 
• Implementation of the many commitments to disability in the Programme for Government. 

We raised many longstanding issues that have been spotlighted by COVID-19 including the funding challenges facing organisations, the growing importance of assistive technology and people with disabilities under 65 inappropriately placed in nursing homes.

The Ministers emphasised the importance of themselves working as a team to deliver on the Programme for Government commitments to people with disabilities and in the establishing of the new Department of Children, Disability, Equality and Integration. 

They committed to working on having the Joint Oireachtas Committee on the UN CRPD established early. They envisaged the Committee as a mechanism to hear and address the lived experience of people with disabilities. They recognised that the Committee could be used as a mechanism to address the cross-cutting nature of the issues that affect people with disabilities' daily lives. 

We will continue to engage with Ministers O'Gorman and Rabbitte to advocate on the need to address the many issues that are affecting people with disabilities, families and services.