Ms Derval McDonagh:

I might also speak to the question about whether things are getting worse. I certainly feel we have been going deeper into crisis in recent years. There is some evidence for that. According the figures from the National Federation of Voluntary Service Providers that I outlined earlier, there are now more people living with elderly carers than was the case two years ago. The numbers are increasing and we see the reasons for that. We love a strategy in Ireland and we are great at writing strategic plans, but we are not great at implementing any of them. We also love pilot projects that never get system-wide change going. The strategies we have are relatively good and the strategy for disabled people was broadly welcomed by the community when it was published, but we have not seen the implementation plan for it. What we need is a year-on-year, fully costed, proper plan whereby we can see progress.

Right now, we are lurching from crisis to crisis, and the HSE and other providers are dealing with an annual budget. We cannot support people with an annual budget. They have to be supported over time, in ways that are meaningful and rights-based, and that cannot be done in an emergency. We see all the time that those elderly carers are terrified about what will happen to their son or daughter, with the person themselves having no plan for their future. When I spoke about institutionalisation and institutional thinking, the Senator mentioned a conversation he had with a social worker. That is a prime example of institutional thinking. We would never say to any other family member, such as a non-disabled sibling, that we were sure they were going to continue living with their brother and sister for the rest of their life, with no plan for them, and that they will never get a house of their own. That would just never happen.