Dobro jutro, Dobar Dan; good morning to the ambassador. He is very welcome. From Ljubljana to Maribor and beautiful places like Portorož, Slovenia is a beautiful country. I was in Bosnia and Herzegovina at the end of the war in 1996. We travelled from Prijedor through Banja Luka up to the border with Slovenia. I remember that Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina were in complete darkness. When we crossed the border into Slovenia, it was lit up. All the lights were on. It was beautiful. Slovenia enjoys that peace, as we do here. We can never take peace for granted. We have so much in common with Slovenia. We have powerful neighbours and great friends. I wish Slovenia a very happy Independence Day.

On this day last year, 25 June 2025, I came in here and presented the Disability (Personalised Budgets) Bill 2024. For the first time in the history of the State, a Bill was prepared by one of the major international law firms based in Dublin along with the Office of Parliamentary Legal Advisers. As part of its pro bono corporate social responsibility, that international law firm gave me a legal team pro bono for almost two years to work on this legislation. It took every bit of Government policy and every Government consultation that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and their coalition partners had done, right up to and including the disability action plan of the then Minister of State, Senator Rabbitte, and the then Minister, Deputy O'Gorman. Everything the Government wanted to do and had set out in policy for personalised budgets is in this Bill. The only thing that is missing is the passing of the legislation. I presented it on this day last year. The Minister, Deputy Foley, time-delayed it for 18 months. According to the Order Paper, the Disability (Personalised Budgets) Bill 2024 is ordered to be read a Second Time on 25 December 2026. I wonder if I should come in before or after the Christmas dinner. Maybe Senator McCarthy will come up from County Kildare and support me. We could share some cranberry sauce over a little bit of reheated turkey.

That time delay was cynical, to be perfectly honest. I was told by the Minister that she had to delay it because she needed to consult her officials on the pilot project. She said she would come back to me in good faith and work with me to progress this legislation. Here I am, exactly one year later, and what have I heard from the Minister, Deputy Foley? I have heard nothing, and I have written to her several times seeking the meeting she promised me. All the while, disabled citizens around this country are locked into grinding, enduring poverty, a cost-of-living crisis and a cost of disability that is up to €28,000 per annum. All I can say is, to quote Scrooge from Dickens's A Christmas Carol, "no space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused". That is what happened on this day last year, 25 June 2025. I hope we can have some sort of a debate about the cost-of-living crisis as it applies to disabled citizens.