Elected in June, the deputy stayed away from the hemicycle for several months due to health problems. This Tuesday, he asked his first question to the government, referring to his stay in hospital.
A new sequence. This Tuesday, Sébastien Peytavie became the first deputy in a wheelchair to sit in the hemicycle. Elected in Dordogne last June and member of the group of environmentalists, the parliamentarian had remained far from the National Assembly after a fall coupled with an infection, as he explained to Release.
For his return, the one who became paraplegic at the age of three after a heart operation, arrived in a refurbished Palais Bourbon. “The hemicycle and the toilets have been made accessible”, he confided on LCP.
“Is there an urgency to reform?”
During the traditional question and answer session to the government, Sébastien Peytavie tried the exercise for the first time. Because of his disability, he sat in the front row alongside the ministers.
Like many, the elected official from the Génération.s party mentioned a subject that is on everyone’s lips: pension reform. By trying in passing to deflate the language of the executive who repeats that this measure is “necessary” for the balance of the pension system.
Addressing Labor Minister Olivier Dussopt, he said, in a monologue:
“Is there an urgent need to reform Mr. Minister? No. Neither the economists nor the pension steering committee give you reason.”
For him, “the real emergency”, “is the bankruptcy of a health system and a social model now at double speed, where aging in good health becomes a class privilege”. To better support his point, Sébastien Peytavie said he “noted [lui] even during [son] hospitalization”.
“Difficulty”
He continued: “The urgency is on the side of the employees, who, every day, see their working conditions deteriorate further.” Before adding: “You want to increase retirement pensions, increase salaries, one cannot go without the other”.
The deputy then mentioned “the carers of the Pontoise hospital, 90% on sick leave” and “this emergency nurse who has been working at night since he was 25 years old who will not have the possibility of leaving earlier since the legal age is postponed”. Before asking the government:
“How do you really intend to take into account the hardship for the care and support professions whether they are in the city or in the hospital, at home or in nursing homes, or with people with disabilities?”
“Urgency” to save the health system
Olivier Dussopt first replied to him with a polite formula: “Allow first to tell you on behalf of the government that we are happy that your state of health allows you to join us and participate in our work”. Even if he recognized “a point of agreement” on the difficulty of caregivers, the ex-socialist was firm. “We consider that the reform is necessary”, he reaffirmed.
To Release, Sébastien Peytavie confided: “Certainly, I am a deputy with a disability, but I do not want to express myself only on this subject”. The ecologist advanced as a hobbyhorse the “urgency” to save the health system. This first question to the government gave him the opportunity to distinguish himself on this topic.
