Dr. Joanne McCarthy:

Any of the representatives of our fellow organisations who are sitting patiently in the Gallery today could tell similar stories, including in respect of migraine and acquired brain injury. They also run community-based programmes that facilitate people and support them in keeping healthy.

The DFI continues to endorse the calls from the NAI but we have two specific points. First, we are seeking to secure a multi-annual investment programme, worth €200 million over a five-year period, to bed down community-based resources and infrastructure that support people to continue to live with conditions in their homes and as best they can in their communities.

We want members to commit to the development of a strategy for community services and supports that brings coherence to this work and joins it up with the neurorehabilitation strategy, the value-for-money programme and the primary care strategy. It should result in coherence so those conditions can experience seamless passage in and out of services. We are asking members to endorse that. We are reminding them that there more than 600,000 people with disabilities depend on these types of services, not on residential services or day services. One in four of us today will probably end up depending on these types of services. We are asking members to commit to supporting the development of the services those with disabilities need on a daily basis.