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

It is good to see and hear from the representatives.

It is good to meet Ms Weldon in person and it is good to see Ms Kenny again on screen. I will address Ms Weldon first. ILMI worked on a model of best practice with South Dublin County Council on the making inclusion a reality initiative. Has this been adopted by local authorities? What is Ms Weldon’s opinion on the housing and disability steering group in county and city councils? Is it working well? Is it the correct model? Is there DPO representation? We talk about consultation but Ms Weldon is right that it is much more than consultation, especially when it happens after the fact, after the plans have been drawn up, and it is only kind of a tick-box exercise. Is it the correct model?

We hear all the time that there are insufficient supports for DPOs to properly engage with local authorities or Departments. Often, meetings are held at times that suit the officials as it is their paid employment, whereas the disabled person might be the only unpaid person in the room, may not even have the correct supports given to them, or may not even have the fact acknowledged that they have a job and may not be able to attend. Perhaps Ms Weldon could talk about what supports should be made available to DPOs so that they can engage better with Departments and local authorities.

This question could be for any of the witnesses. Is there sufficient data available to plan properly for the number of disabled people in their communities to enable them to live independently? We probably have a pretty good idea of the number of people in congregated settings. We have many under-65s in nursing homes who should not be in nursing homes. It is not their choice and they should be accommodated properly in our communities. The people I sometimes feel we know the least about are the people living with aged parents, in particular people with intellectual disability. We do not seem to have a clear amount of data to indicate how many people we should be planning for. I often engage with the local authority, and if you are talking about an individual, they will have a file with that person’s needs in it, whether it is supported living or a certain type of accessible housing. However, they do not have an overall number. If I ask the housing officer how many people on their list require supported living, they will not know because they are all individual files. There needs to be a way to look at data better so that we can plan.

Are both St. Joseph’s and the Brothers of Charity approved housing bodies? I am a little bit unclear on that. St. Joseph’s is.