Written Answers - Rights of Disabled.
Breeda Moynihan-Cronin
Ceist:
38
Mrs. B. Moynihan-Cronin
asked the
Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs
the measures, if any, he intends to deliver on his Government's promise to ensure that people with disabilities have equal opportunities to participate fully in all aspects of society.
[16505/97]
The Government is committed to radical change to ensure that the needs and aspirations of people with disabilities, their families, carers and advocates are comprehensively addressed. In this regard, the Government will be ensuring that disability is placed on the agenda of every Government Department and public body.
My Department's mission is to promote social well-being through income and other supports which enable people to participate in society in a positive way. Traditionally people with disabilities have relied heavily on the State income maintenance system for their incomes. Therefore, by providing them and other social welfare recipients with the necessary financial resources, the various income support and other schemes administered by my Department ensure that individuals, families and communities have the opportunity and incentive to participate fully in society. However, it is not enough to simply provide income support services for people with disabilities, it is also equally important to ensure that these services are fully accessible. In this regard, I am committed to making all my Department's services fully accessible to people with disabilities. This involves ensuring that all my Department's premises are accesssible; that information on social welfare services is provided in an accessible format and that the services themselves are accessible to people with disabilities.
The report of the Commission on the Status of People with Disabilities, which was published last year, provides a framework for ensuring that people with disabilities can exercise their rights to participate, to the fullest extent of their potential, in economic, social and cultural life. Three guiding principles have informed the commission in its work — equality; maximising participation; and enabling independence.
Following the publication of the commission's report an interdepartmental task force was established to prepare the Government's plan of action for people with disabilities. The task force is due to report to my colleague, the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, by the end of the year. However, my Department has already taken significant steps towards improving the position of people with disabilities, in advance of the Government's action plan being finalised. This year's Social Welfare Act, for instance, provides for the introduction of a comprehensive package of measures to further assist people with disabilities, including special increases in social welfare rates over and above the rate of inflation, which bring invalidity pension up to the target rate recommended by the Commission on Social Welfare, and disability allowance, blind person's pension and disability benefit up from 95 per cent to 98 per cent of the CSW rate; a new part payment of disability allowance for those in part-time residential care; and an additional payment of 50 per cent to recipients of carer's allowance providing care to more than one person.
In addition, 1,000 places have been reserved under the back-to-work allowance scheme for a pilot scheme for people with disabilities, to facilitate their integration into mainstream employment.
I am examining further improvements in the services provided by my Department for people with disabilities in the context of formulating proposals for the 1998 budget, having regard to the commitments contained in the Government's programme An Action Programme for the Millennium, and the recommendations contained in the report of the Commission on the Status of People with Disabilities.
