Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 9 December 2021
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Disability Matters
Aligning disability services with the UNCRPD and considering the future system and innovation: Discussion (Resumed)
Ms Louise Loughlin:
I thank the Deputy for the question about what we need to do. I suppose what we would consider from an advocacy prospective when we look across the range of issues that emerge for us is this is not only about healthcare or social care. The costs for families and people with disabilities go much wider. Ms Fiona Walsh spoke eloquently there about the educational situation. As well as the impact now for children in the system, there is a future impact in terms of what they are not being provided with. Another issue that comes up for us is housing and accommodation and we know from the disability capacity review what the increased demand will be. It is about money but it is also about where that money is going and how that is joined up. It is probably more about trying to pull the threads of that together into something more coherent and saying that we need this across different Departments. There is probably a need for political drive to bring that around. It probably also is about going back to the principles of Sláintecare and about devolving decision-making to communities and looking at it that way rather than having centralised decision-making around these types of issues.
Those are the issues. Where there was more a focus there at political level, it might get to this Holy Grail we are all after more quickly.
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