Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for being late. I read the witnesses' statements last night and I thank them for their presentations this morning, particularly Mr. Alford. It is the lived experience that brings home what is needed and that some people are restricted from living their lives. I am aware that a sizeable amount of the disability budget every year goes towards residential services. I presume these are the wrong type of residential services in that they are congregated settings or congregated-type settings. Even if there may not be more that ten residents, they are still congregated-type settings where the person does not get the choice of who they live with or why they want to live there. That money, I presume, could be better spent but there needs to be a proper plan for it.

I attended a conference recently where it was pointed out that the cost of designing a house to ensure it is universally designed to ++ standards is €13,000 on average, although it depends on the size of the house and so on, whereas it costs €50,000 to adapt a house. That brings home that we need to build a lot more houses, in the first instance, and a lot more with universal design. What percentage of new houses should be built to universal design? Ideally, it should be all houses because everybody gets older and people may develop mobility issues so it would make sense to do so. What would be a good starting point?

Independent living is not just about a person's house but also about all the other supports, transport and access to education and employment. Many people will say it is about access to supports, which, in many cases, is a personal assistant, PA. I find working with people who are applying for a PA that it is difficult to access. There are not enough hours in the first place, but if someone is assessed by the HSE and granted hours, to interview someone and be able to employ that person is complicated. That whole system needs to be streamlined. Will the witnesses comment on that? It is about getting as many people as possible into appropriate housing but with the proper supports.

The cost of keeping people in nursing homes or congregated settings has to be excessive. Is there an overall figure for that cost? It is disappointing that while people are being moved out of nursing homes, others are being moved into them. The figure is not going down. We have heard about these issues so many times but we cannot discuss them enough. The committee should be pushing for the implementation plan for the housing strategy for disabled people because we are already a year into that and the plan has not even been produced. I thank the witnesses again.