Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 27 June 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality

Update on Disability Issues: Minister of State at the Department of Justice and Equality

9:00 am

Photo of Kevin O'KeeffeKevin O'Keeffe (Cork East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I came in for five minutes but I have stayed for longer than I anticipated. I support the request made by my colleague, Deputy Ó Laoghaire, for the Minister of State to meet a deputation of Deputies from Cork to discuss the availability of essential services. I ask the Minister of State to agree to such a meeting.

The failure to provide for polling stations that can be accessed by people with disabilities has been mentioned. I would be careful in saying that polling stations should be shut down. I come from a rural area where polling booths were placed in private houses until quite recently. We have moved on since then. There is a limited choice of public buildings in certain parts of the country. If we are talking about upgrading access or reviewing buildings, funding needs to be provided to facilitate that. If this does not happen, people in some parts of the country will end up with no polling booths within miles and miles of them. We need to be fair to all people, for example by giving them transport or whatever.

I came to this meeting to raise a different issue. Senator Dolan referred in his concluding remarks to the need to avoid putting people in nursing homes. Yesterday, the Minister of State with responsibility for older people, Deputy Jim Daly, launched a report on the home care package, which is an alternative to the fair deal scheme for nursing homes.

Will the Department have a look at the report and see where it could feed into it and how younger adults could avail of this option? As Senator Dolan stated, the last thing we want to do is put people into nursing homes or community care houses. We want to keep them at home. There may be some parts of this report that the Department could feed into, particularly with regard to the home care package scheme for younger people.

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