Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 21 November 2019

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health

Proposed Closure of Cuisle Accessible Holiday and Respite Care Resort: Discussion

Photo of Bríd SmithBríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I thank the IWA representatives for the presentation. I want to talk about the promotion leaflet for hotel breaks. The leaflet has quotes that read like comments on Trivago or Booking.com. There are references to the staff and food being excellent and to patrons feeling equal going on holidays with everyone else. They no longer feel that people with disabilities are put in a box. They say the service is excellent and gives them a great holiday and not only respite. Those quotes were also in the IWA presentation, as Ms Keogh will be aware. The reason I have read them out is because I believe there is a major imbalance in the representation of what people with disabilities may or may not choose and what may or may not be open to them.

Like everyone else, and I assume it is the same for the IWA representatives, we have been heavily lobbied by those who use the centre regularly for their holidays. Some of the quotes would break hearts. I want to read some of them into the record because it is only fair to have people praise Cuisle in the same way as the brochure praises the hotels. One comes from the sister of a 37 year old woman. She said her sister is vulnerable and cannot talk or walk, but she calls Cuisle her boozing holiday because she can drive herself to the bar, where the staff know her and know what she likes. One man goes to visit her every year she is there and has even written a song about her. How special is that? Another comment comes from a woman directly. Cuisle offers her and her friends from her centre a holiday together where they look forward to seeing each other very much. It is the only opportunity they have for a holiday together. They have a great time meeting other wheelchair users. The next comment is from the father of a young teenage girl. He is actually a friend of mine. He says his daughter will not stay in anyone's house except his mother's because the girl knows her granny will look after her in the same way that the staff in Cuisle look after her. The idea of throwing her into a new surrounding because of some notion of integration is nonsense. She needs to feel safe and secure and that only happens when she has continuity. If we force people into more isolation when they do not want to go somewhere else, they will feel more anxiety. That will deter their families from sending them on holidays. When people suffer from mental and physical disabilities, it is all about safety, security and knowing what to expect.

I have read their testimony because I believe it is important to put balance on this. It strikes me as strange that when the IWA is asked for the numbers on what users say, the number of people who want to use Cuisle and the numbers who do not, the association does not have exact numbers. It has a general pattern of what may be happening with service users.

In thejournal.ieand the association statement today, the IWA "stressed to Minister McGrath that the clear choice and preference of people with a disability is increasingly more about having access to positive and non-segregated settings and where existing commercial hotel provider settings implement universal design initiatives to accommodate people of all levels of abilities". That is a big statement to make without a questionnaire or survey that we can all look at and determine, for example, that 99 users prefer to be in Cuisle while 299 would prefer to go to commercial hotels. That is a big statement to make. If the IWA made that clear to the Minister of State, Deputy McGrath, and that is what the IWA believes to be the pattern based on what we know about the actual results, then the IWA representations to the Minister of State, Deputy McGrath, expressed a preference for the hotel model over the Cuisle model. It may well be the case that had the IWA done it the other way around, the Minister of State, Deputy McGrath, might have decided to find the €1.5 million. I am not a big fan of any Minister but, as it happens, the Minister of State may well have done that.

I agree with the IWA in one respect and I see where the association has a problem. This is a bigger political issue.

This is the same week in which the Government announced it will put €3 billion of taxpayers' money into broadband. There has just been a big announcement on the overspend on the children's hospital, which although we cannot prove it, most of us believe impacts on all services, including mental health and disability.

In her submission, Ms Keogh stated, "In June, this committee was briefed by a number of disability service provider umbrella groups on the growing funding crisis in the disability sector." That is an important statement. She went on to state, "In this context, during the period 2008 to 2018, the IWA has seen its financial reserves diminish by €5.7 million". In 2008, there was a banking collapse, the then Government bailed out the banks to the tune of €64 billion, and many services suffered. We now live in the fastest, healthiest-growing economy in the EU. In the context that this is happening to the most vulnerable sectors of society, the IWA stated its funding is depleted and that there is a crisis in the funding of the disability sector. It is an absolute disgrace that Cuisle will close. Anybody who was at the protests last week would fully back the users to retain the service. We have to find a way to retain it. Given that the Government makes a bags of everything else, overspends on everything and deprives people of proper funding, we will have to find a firefighting service way out of the matter. We cannot let down the father of the girl, the sister of the woman, all the people attending the meeting and their families.

Whatever proposals the Senator made may be the way out but the IWA should tell the Minister of State, Deputy McGrath, that the emphasis put on the hotel model was outweighed by the protest and the sentiment coming strongly from the people use Cuisle day to day and year to year, and that we cannot afford to close it. People have to have the choice and preference, and the IWA should state that, unfortunately, it gave the Minister of State the wrong impression there is only one way to go, namely, into commercialised hotels. What IWA stated to the Minister of State was flawed, or if it was not, we need to hear what the wheelchair users and the people who use the service say to the IWA about the service. Our guests might comment on that.

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