Letters to the Editor: Burden always falls on families of children with special needs

Picture: Larry Cummins

I am a parent of a child with a rare disorder and complex needs. I am also a parent representative on the local implementation group for progressing disability services in Waterford. 

It is a conceptual and practical reorganisation of how children from 0-18 will access disability services and supports in future. 

I attended my first local implementation group meeting this week. The original timeframe for the reconfiguration of services to the new Children’s Disability Network Teams was July 5.

We were informed at this meeting that there is still no national agreement between the HSE and partner agencies on documentation and data sharing.

 Essentially this means that the transfer files for each child cannot be provided to the new disability teams and the teams will remain non-operational.

There is no timeframe for this agreement to be signed.

This is catastrophic for children all over the country that have already experienced significant service delays as a result of the pandemic and the cyberattack. It is unconscionable that a legal framework for data sharing between the HSE and agencies is, at this late stage, still not in place.

It seems likely that the progressing disability services’ core concept of ‘family centred services’ will in reality place additional responsibilities upon already overburdened families and reduce direct interaction with professional therapists, yet even this would be better than the purgatorial uncertainty of nothing at all.

Mike Masterson

Portlaw

Waterford

Turkish border must remain open to Syria

On July 10, the fate of over 3m people in Syria will be determined when the UN Security Council decides if the only remaining border crossing between Turkey and north-west Syria can stay open.

The Bab al Hawa crossing allows humanitarian aid to be delivered to a region where 81% of the population, half of whom are children, are in need of immediate humanitarian support.

Ireland is pressing hard to keep the border open and, along with Norway, is drafting the UN resolution to maintain the border crossing. We fully support Ireland’s leadership in the negotiations.

Ten years since the war began, the need for humanitarian assistance has never been greater. The United Nations estimates that 22m civilians are now caught up in this horrific conflict. 80% of the population now lives below the poverty line, and 9.3m people are food insecure. Covid-19 continues to spread at an alarming rate while the healthcare infrastructure, decimated by years of conflict, remains woefully inadequate to respond.

Access is critical to ensure that all humanitarian agencies can continue to provide life-saving assistance. Concern’s work alone, with the support of Irish Aid, supports 1m people in Syria with food assistance, water and sanitation, shelter, education, and protection.

In the run-up to the vote, Concern and more than 40 other NGOs operating in Syria have been calling on all members of the Security Council to approve the reauthorisation of the crossing for at least 12 months, and to reopen the Al Yarubiyah and Bab al Salam crossings.

The stakes could not be higher. If the border crossings are closed, and there is a genuine fear that this might happen, the work of the entire humanitarian community in Syria could be in jeopardy, and the consequences will be disastrous for families whose lives have already been devastated by years of war. This cannot happen.

Dominic MacSorley

CEO, Concern Worldwide

Take focus off moral ethos of hospital

Further to Dr Don O’Leary’s letter of July 1, I return to the topic of ethical ethos in the new National Maternity Hospital.

The medical consultants who will provide the medical services in the new National Maternity Hospital issued a statement on July 28, specifically designed to answer doubts expressed publicly about the ethical ethos in the new hospital, and I quote: “The misinformation that services at the new maternity hospital will be curtailed by any religious ethos is particularly troubling given its inaccuracy”.

The statement is crystal clear that all obstetric, neonatal, and gynaecological care within Irish law will be provided in the new hospital, that the consultants could not countenance any restrictions on medical practice based on religion and that a cast-iron guarantee in this regard is included in the proposed operating licence to be granted by the Department of Health for the new hospital.

All relevant parties to this affair have stated their positions regarding ethos and all are on the same page. How could the outcome be more certain? The probability that a blind three-legged horse will win The Grand National is greater than the probability that a Catholic ethical ethos will operate in the National Maternity hospital. However, ongoing picking at this non-problem of ethical ethos, by Dr O’Leary and others, takes the focus off real problems associated with the project such as the ballooning public cost of building this new hospital.

Professor William Reville

Waterfall,

Co Cork

Dismal record on trafficking fishermen

The US State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report which profiles the performance of every nation in the combatting of human trafficking and force labour, has been published and Ireland and its fishing industry have been shamed yet again in the report.

Findings tally with ITF’s direct experience of abuses of Non-EEA migrants in the sector.

The lack of tangible results in the many referrals from the ITF to the gardaí of non-EEA fishers who reported abuses on Irish flagged vessels that fulfilled the internationally recognised DELPHI criteria for human trafficking is again a contributory factor in maintaining Ireland’s position alongside Romania as the only ‘Tier 2 watchlist’ countries in Europe.

We endorse the call in the report for the government to ‘enforce the amended rules for the working scheme for sea fishers to reduce their risk of labour trafficking’ as well as the observation that ‘Since the government amended its atypical working scheme for sea fishers in 2019, it has identified zero trafficking victims in the fishing industry, compared to 23 victims in 2018. Some experts also continued to raise serious concerns and asserted that foreign national sea fishers outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) were at even greater risk following the amendment of the scheme because the government failed to enforce the amended rules of the scheme, no longer identified victims, and had begun revoking the status and associated protections against previously identified trafficking victims within this sector.’

And furthermore: ‘[the] labour relations committee was unavailable to undocumented workers, who could only pursue civil suits if they could prove they took all reasonable steps to rectify their irregular working status’.

In the course of the last five months since the ITF has been in a position to step up again its campaign in fisheries, we have thus far encountered directly over 20 undocumented fishers from Egypt and Ghana who to one degree or another report the usual abuses and deceptions. It is likewise with those we interview actually documented in the Atypical Scheme who suffer from overwork and underpayment that goes either undetected by the WRC and MSO or when it is detected has never resulted in dissuasive penalties for vessel owners.

Further case studies in Ireland’s dismal record in preventing abuses in the fishing industry will be brought to the attention of the media and the Oireachtas in the coming weeks by the ITF.

Michael O’Brien

Fisheries campaign lead in Ireland
for the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF)

Landlords punished for State’s inaction

The State has, for more than 15 years, exasperated the housing crisis by introducing populist anti property owner legislation. This has had a devastating impact reducing supply. 22,000 tenancies have been lost since rent pressure zones were introduced in 2016. Government policy cannot and should not be developed as a reaction to the hysterical posturing of left-wing politicians and tenant advocacy groups on social media and television. Legislation needs to be considered, measured, accountable, and effective. Additional supply is what is required and retaining existing supply is essential.

Extending the rules to 2024 substantially disadvantage landlords trapped with unsustainable rents, negatively affected financially by Covid and those relying on income in retirement. Rental policy should be fair and equitable to all investors.

Harmonised Indices of Consumer Prices (HICP) is not an acceptable or appropriate indices and does not reflect the cost of the provision of Irish accommodation. The provision of accommodation must be sustainable. HICP does not include mortgage interest, building materials, or insurance. Using the index will be difficult, with rates varying from month to month, depending on when a review is carried out.

Rent controls have been proven in other jurisdictions to disincentivise investment and will further hasten the exit of landlords from the market and simultaneously deter new ones from entering.

Government policy is to absolve themselves of responsibility to provide social housing, hoping others will do it for them and then penalise them when they do. Private Investors supply over 90% of property, throughout the country. Investors see this and react by investing elsewhere except those such as private investment funds heavily incentivised by the Government and supported with taxpayer funding.

Stephen Faughnan

Chair Irish Property Owners’ Association,

Dublin 15.

Putting welfare of all above crowd-pleasing

The easiest thing for any politician to do is to take the easy and popular option. Over the past 25 years our country has almost been ruined by easy options and popular policies. Light-touch regulation was the angel on the bonnet of the Rolls Royce of easy politics. That is the creature of pressure from lobbyists and it has caused a havoc — from banking to stockbrokers to construction and concrete blocks.

Over the past week the Government has taken some unpopular decisions. Witness the hue and cry. Just like last autumn. Remember what happened after Christmas. I for one prefer a Government that is willing to put the welfare of its people before short-term crowd-pleasing easy political advantage.

Michael Deasy

Carrigart,

Co Donegal