Mr. Enda Egan:

The report we just published shows very clearly that people are under immense pressure and that there have been unforeseen behavioural issues for some people with intellectual disabilities because of the Covid-19 shutdown. Some people with intellectual disabilities need consistency in their daily routine and their friends and support workers from within the day services have been taken away from them as a result of the closure of the services. That has brought about a range of different behaviours that families have not seen previously. That, in turn, has put huge pressure on families, many of whom are trying to work from home or provide care for other family members and other siblings in the home environment. This has brought about huge issues for people trying to home educate, as the environment within the home is completely different from that in the school. Many families are experiencing complete physical, mental and emotional burnout from trying to juggle all these issues that Covid has brought about. As Deputies have highlighted, the real concern for people is that they cannot see an end to this. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. For example, we dealt with somebody yesterday whose sibling was getting a service for one hour a week. They have been told that will go up to two hours a week from 8 August. There is no pathway for how that is going to increase, as has been said repeatedly this morning. The pathway document with guidelines on the resumption of day services issued by the HSE last week clearly states that while there is a Covid-19 emergency, services are not going to return to pre-Covid levels.

There is no indication as to what levels can be achieved. We all know that we will be living with this situation for some time. There will have to be a national movement of people with intellectual disabilities, everybody with a disability and family carers to ensure that the Government is aware of the pressures those people are under. The Covid-19 pandemic is obviously having an impact on the abilities and rights of people to go out and march and bring their views to the streets. I would not like to see that situation taken advantage of as a result of people not being able to do that.

What needs to happen is that services need to open up very quickly. As has been outlined, some organisations and service providers have done well. Others may have appeared to have used the pandemic as a reason to not provide a service and perhaps to take a very risk-averse view regarding Covid-19. From here on, however, the HSE at national level is adamant that services need to reopen quickly. At the local level of the CHOs, there needs to be clear engagement with service providers because these services have to be got up and running very quickly.

There are issues here, however, as has been stated, regarding providing some funding to maximise capacity and also to take advantage of the situation to put in place the kind of services and methodology in service provision that has been underpinned by the policy, New Directions, which was introduced in 2012 with a four-year plan. There are still major gaps regarding how that plan has been implemented, but there are opportunities now for service providers to implement that New Directions plan properly and to ensure that the person with the disability is right at the centre of the service being provided.