Dr. Eamonn Carroll:

To return to the point about good governance and good data, that is certainly something the ESRI came across. In all of our dealings with disabled people, disabled people's advocates, the service providers and the HSE, everyone came across as very committed and doing their best within a system that was not setting them up to succeed. Obviously, as a research institute, we keep coming back to the importance of good data in that we cannot meet needs if we do not know they exist. It is very important that this data is collected and recorded, and that it is transparent and accessible. If someone is assessed, their needs are evaluated and they are given a certain number of hours, if the number of hours they are given is under the number of hours they need and if the hours they need are recorded, that gap is recorded and it can be tracked.

Another point worth mentioning is that this research was done under our joint research programme with the National Disability Authority, NDA, and we are currently finishing up some work with it that looks at attitudes towards disabled people. I cannot give away too much as the report has not yet been launched but one thing we have found is a very high level of public support for policies to support disabled people and specifically for increasing the funding towards this. Even when we go into things like acknowledging that this might mean a budget reallocation or a tax increase, I think there is a public will and public support for it.

There was a question about whether other countries were doing well. The Nordic countries always come up and the UK comes up but again since 2008 they saw a retrenchment similar to here. I do not think any of them have fully moved past that yet. We could be plumbing into uncharted territory here but it would be great for Ireland to able to be front of the pack on this.