Mr. Tony Cunningham:

A retired colleague rang me recently from Carlow to tell me that his daughter queued for and bought a house based on the plans, without having seen it.

That is what is happening for many people, and it is, as Mr. O'Herlihy said, at just the basic requirement. That is a private purchase. When it comes to social housing, very often developers have a big tract of land, they get planning permission for development, potentially they could build the houses as well, and then they sell them to an approved housing provider, as its part in housing, which just takes what is going, so there is no inclusion for wheelchair-accessible housing on that front. That has a big impact. It is different if an approved housing body is designing and building itself, but even when it is doing that and it has its own design team, it is the building regulations it refers to.

On the question around nursing homes, as members will be aware, the Ombudsman report Wasted Lives came out recently and it was so upsetting to watch and to listen to the videos and voices of the experiences of people who were interviewed in nursing homes at the time. It took the wind out of me. In that report the HSE confirmed it was supporting 1,300 people under the age of 65 in to live in private nursing homes. There is a piece of work being done on that at the moment. We are involved with the HSE in a working group to try to work out pathways going forward. However, you can have all the meetings in the world you want, but unless the building regulations are changed, the houses will not be there other than on a bespoke basis for meeting people. If every one of the 1,300 people wanted to get out of the nursing home, what would that say?

To make that more concrete, a recent example, and she has agreed to our sharing the story, is a 48-year-old lady who had a stroke when she was 40. She spent the past seven years or more in a nursing home with people who had dementia and with older people. She spent most of her time in her room. The reason she was there was because there were no alternatives for her and she had no family in the area either. By chance one of our houses became vacant. It was fully wheelchair-accessible. She has been a tenant there for the past number of months.

I had the privilege of meeting this lady last month. One of the questions I asked her was what difference this had made to her life? The response was, the silence - just the silence, with no bells ringing, no doors banging, no trolleys in the corridor, and no staff or other residents shouting in the corridors. Imagine that the silence was the biggest difference in having a home of your own.

Another question I asked was what was her favourite part of the house? She pointed to the kitchen, saying she can cook her favourite food, which is waffles, when she wants and how she wants. The third thing that was so obvious from her experience was that she had a dog. The love and friendship between the two of them, you would nearly bring it home with you. Ms Lally would have had discussions with her before the house came along and she was on about this dog, and Ms Lally said to forget about the dog until we got the house. That is how basic it is.

That lady spent seven years in a nursing home because there was no available wheelchair-accessible housing for her to have a life. I do not know who put these regulations in place, but it is very frustrating.