Tom Clonan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank our guests or coming in here today. At the outset, I wish to say I have only recently arrived here but I am also coming from a lived experience that is quite narrow. My understanding of our community and of our shared experience is predicated on just our own family experience. I have learned a great deal since I have come in here and through the committee. I very much appreciate and thank all of the organisations for all of the work they do because with regard to so many of the concerns that impact people like us, it is great to know that they are dealing with them in a very proactive way.

I apologise to Mr. Alford as I had to leave earlier to go to another meeting. I am very sorry that I missed his contribution but I will listen back to it.

I refer to some of the figures given by Ms McDonagh, where she began by talking about the number of people with intellectual disabilities, ID, living with parents over the age of 70, and to those then over 80 years of age. She mentioned a figure, I believe, of 1,365 of people living in nursing homes who are inappropriately accommodated in that setting.

I remember a couple of years ago, where the DFI had a public awareness campaign and the figure then was roughly similar. Is that a static figure or is that figure growing?

My second question about the people in the nursing home setting is to ask if they are migrating and, if so, what kind of settings are they migrating to? This could be people who find themselves in a nursing home setting subsequent to acquiring a brain injury or some other life event that puts them into that space or it could be people who were living with an elderly parent, who goes into crisis and suddenly finds him or herself being shunted into that situation.

When people were here and spoke about the time-to-move-on process; I asked them where people were migrating to, they said that they did not map that and did not know. I suspect that many are being returned to elderly parents, are becoming homeless or are being put into inappropriate settings. I would be interested to know the answer to that question.

On the question of having a life and not having service; I personally cannot get answers to those questions in respect of my own family situation. To put that in the context of what we are talking about today, I spoke to a senior social worker in the HSE who has responsibility for the disability services. She asked whether my son had siblings and I said he does. I was asked then did he have a sister to which I replied he did. I was asked then what I was worried about as she could look after him after I died. That engagement was just before Covid-19 struck in 2019. This did not happen in 1870. That was the thinking. I do not believe that that person was trying to be unkind or uncharitable but was genuinely trying to reassure me that that was probably what was going to happen. In that context, I have been receiving a tsunami of contacts from people who are in crisis.

In the past week alone, I have been contacted by about eight elderly parents of adult children with Down's syndrome for whom there is no respite or setting. There is nothing for them. They are at home, in absolute crisis. I have had representations from two young men with acquired brain injuries. One of them can no longer work as a result of his injury, and the family home is in danger. His relationship has broken down and he is homeless. The other is a younger guy who is effectively homeless and using the last of his savings. He is staying in Airbnb accommodation, he cannot get support and he is terrified he is going to end up on the streets. He takes a lot of medications and he is afraid that if he is put into a homelessness hostel, those medications will be stolen for sale.

On the one hand, quantitatively, there seems to have been an improvement in terms of policies, with great aspirational documents, but, qualitatively, in the lived experience, I get the sense things are getting worse. A demographic dynamic is at play. In 2004, the population of Ireland was 4 million, whereas it is now 5 million plus. Ms O’Connell talked about preparing for the inevitable numbers of people who will acquire injury, including everyone who is attending this meeting or watching it online. Is the situation, qualitatively on the ground, getting worse? Are we in crisis or is it getting better? Is there a jurisdiction, within the European Union or elsewhere, that is a reasonably good model for addressing all the complex issues we have identified here?