Dr. Joanne McCarthy:

Our understanding of housing is that guidelines were issued last October to the effect that they could not block assessments or allocations because there were not enough personal social service resources required to enable the person. It may be worthwhile going that way. For the medium term, there are personalised budgets. The task force on personalised budgets has just completed its work and that report is now with the Minister of State with responsibility for disability. There will be a commitment to piloting, for want of a better word, models of personalised budgets. Geraldine could perhaps ask if hers could be one of the pilot cases.

There is a huge inequity in the experience of disability services depending on the disability. Someone born with a disability is included in a cradle to grave approach, a wraparound concept of services. If a person acquires a disability as they age it is much harder to access disability services. It should not be that way. The existing service models soak up between 80% and 90% of the budget. Planning for unmet needs if a person's experience of disability changes is not incorporated into the planning and delivery of existing services.