Mr. Bernard O'Regan:

There is a significant focus at the moment on ensuring that DPOs are consulted and included in the planning and development of services. It is also important to be truthful that there is a still a way to go to make sure that is consistent and unquestioned. A piece of work is being led by the Department of children at the moment in the context of stakeholders to try to develop some structures that will flow from the Department through the HSE around planning the development and the delivery of services and their design. The work programme being developed to implement the disability action plan over the next three years at all levels has a very clear expectation that the DPOs are fully involved throughout that. As the national disability inclusion strategy is developed, that will be reflected there too. However, rather like the answer I gave to Senator O’Loughlin earlier, we cannot take that for granted. It does need constant review.

While we are engaging with the DPOs, it is also important that we are identifying who are the key stakeholders. The people who will be affected more directly will not always be directly involved with a DPO. We either need to make sure that they are connected to DPOs or make sure that they are involved, whether, as with the example that the Deputy was giving, it is people advocating for themselves or where they need supports that were using the structures of assisted decision making in order to assist them.

On the multi-annual funding for supports, the Deputy mentioned PA supports and supports towards independence in particular. At the moment, the HSE is funded on an annual basis. We have welcomed the development and the publication of the disability action plan because even though it is not accompanied by an absolute guarantee of funding, it is the first time, certainly in my involvement in disability services, where we have had a clear statement of what is needed over a time span and it frames both Government planning, Departments’ planning, planning for the HSE and others in terms of the future need that we need to work towards. How it gets matched with funding will be a challenge over the next three years but at least it gives us a reference point to come back to. If we cannot have a multi-annual funded plan, then it is the next best thing.