Ms Una Nagle:

I will add to that in response to Deputy Tully's question and would like to add another category to the decongregation along with those in nursing homes, and the middle-aged parents, and that is complex support needs. There are many children and young adults whose families are at breaking point. It is that cohort as well. Increasingly, we find children and adults abandoned in respite facilities, so it is a combination of planning for residential and respite facilities. Families would hold on if they knew they were in the plan somewhere, but there is no plan at the moment.

In the southern region, as a federation we got together ourselves and started to develop a plan in the hope it might be looked at for multi-annual planning. Perhaps something similar could be done around the country because we know who we are planning for and their needs. There will always be an emergency situation we could not predict, but we would have captured 80% of them, I would imagine, as regards their needs going forward. We need to keep families together. It is part of our constitution. We find that families are breaking up because of the pressures, so we need to take it from the grassroots up, keep the family together and increase the respite. We do not have a capital stream for respite developments. There is probably a two-year lead-in time to develop a facility. There are different ranges of that as well. Home sharing has worked very well for a lot of children and adults, but for the more complex individuals we are looking at residential respite to give families a clean break.