Violet-Anne Wynne (Clare, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank Ms Flanagan for her responses and for all the good work she does through the Clare Leader Forum.

My next questions are to Professor McConkey. Based on his comments on the Time to Move on from Congregated Settings report, the failure to implement a no new admissions policy has meant that there has been an almost one-in-one-out door policy with numbers of admissions, vastly minimising the efficacy of transferring people out of congregated settings. As he noted, it will take another two decades to eliminate congregated settings if this pace is maintained. Are we equipped to implement and no new admissions policy? What would that look like? The focus has been on transfers out of these settings, but we need to redirect some attention to preventing people from involuntarily becoming accommodated through congregated care.

Professor Gulati made reference to trans-institutionalisation, which is a valid point. Ireland has an historic tendency towards this. How does he envision preventing this, even if some disabled people who, through will and preference, wish to live in a group setting? How would the associated confines of institutionalisation be separated from, for example, a co-living situation?