Mr. Joe Mason:

These are excellent questions. There are a number of pieces there. One of the things we need to be very clear about is that the Minister of State, Deputy Anne Rabbitte, is currently carrying out an assessment on the accommodation that may be available throughout organisations. There is a requirement for organisations like WALK to step up and step in, and to not be the hurler in the ditch. I really believe that there is more proactive work that organisations like WALK and others in the State could and should be doing. I am not sure where the Minister of State is with her information-gathering exercise. I am not clear as to what that is. I am aware there is a task force, which I believe is called the rapid response group, if memory serves me correctly. I do not have any real information coming out of that. The information flow might not necessarily be what we need it to be. This goes to the Deputy's point around the conjoined thinking and the communication piece.

WALK has succeeded because Ms Kelly and I have a very long history working in the field we do. We were capable of calling in favours. "Remember when I did that for you 15 years ago: well you need to do this for us now," kinds of conversations were taking place. This is not the most appropriate way to do business. It is fine when we are talking about four families, which might be 13 people and a dog, but when we are talking about an actual, real sectoral response then those sorts of living, thriving and working relationships would not work in that regard.

We most definitely need a response and I believe that we are capable of doing so because the sector responded immensely well to the pandemic. I mean that we had the greatest outcomes for people with disabilities in Europe, if my memory serves me correct. I am not a statistics man and I do not always absorb them but I read them. Our response to an internal crisis like the pandemic has been immense. We can now take that response and bring people on the journey but we must ask them to step up and step in. I think that we are well positioned and primed to do so.