Mr. John Dolan:

I thank Deputy Fleming for his comments. He spoke about the SNAs, autism, school-leavers, housing and reclassification. I will make a few general comments and Ms Grogan might be able to give more detail on it. The Deputy is meeting people who are dealing with unemployment, loss of income, mortgages and all the rest of it. School leavers with a disability are an example of the demographic pressure. More than 700 people are in that category this year. The figures will be similar for next year and the following year. Given that they were born 17 years ago, it is an issue not just to do with school leavers but also to do with planning and looking at the simple sums. In saying that, I am not doing justice to the problems and the pressure on people. I have been contacted by some people with one son leaving this year and another next year. There is no sense that we are collecting information and trying to plan for future years. It is as if this comes from nowhere every year.

The Health Research Board produces statistics every year. There are as many people waiting to get personal assistants as there are people who have them. There are as many people waiting for home supports as those who have them. We could start beating each other up over these problems affecting real people, but we will be at it every year unless we start doing some spreadsheet work on it. We must all get involved. We are up for working to some kind of template or plan and moving beyond just the austerity mode. As a nation we need to start to analyse these issues and work in whatever ways we must.

All the examples the Deputy has given demonstrate - I will not call it an attack - a withering of community infrastructure. In two or three years, when we come out of the cutbacks, we will find a bit of a wasteland before us and there will be no plan for moving forward. That will be a time of greater hopelessness for people than the present. The logic will be that everything is coming right, but that will not happen unless the planning is done in the next couple of years.

The Deputy mentioned the biggest issue, that of reclassification or redefinition, which is a problem of major concern. While the classification can be changed, if there are real needs and problems they do not go away. They will fester and come back. Those are the challenges. Housing is another issue in this regard.