Martin Daly (Roscommon-Galway, Fianna Fail)

I also apologise for being late. Unfortunately, the health and disability committee meetings clash, which is a pity because they are equally important.

The figures for Ireland in relation to disability in terms of poverty, health, mental health, employment and housing do not make good reading based on international comparisons. We are starting from a very low base. I missed the Minister of State's statement, but I fully accept her commitment and that of the Government to improving things. The Taoiseach, Deputy Martin, has put this at the heart of things, as has the Minister, Deputy Foley. I know it is going to take a multidepartmental approach.

One of the areas I am increasingly concerned about is people living with disability who are getting older, whose parents have been literally abandoned by the system. I do not know if the abandonment is done with intent but it is certainly done with neglect, which I know is a strong word. I refer to parents who have willingly committed their whole lives, sometimes with minimal support from the State, to look after their children with disabilities. As they advance in years, they have no certainty or pathway to plan for a seamless transition into either independent living or sheltered living. We have learned from the nursing homes debacle that too often there is a binary choice: one is either at home or in full-time care in a nursing institution. We know people have been in inappropriate nursing home facilities because there was nowhere else for them to be.

Do we have any plan for the ageing parents who might be watching this meeting, who live in daily anxiety as they get older? Their children with a disability may have been easy enough to manage when they were younger but it is less easy now. They may have behavioural problems and the parents may not be able to do it any more, physically or emotionally. What pathways are we going to provide to those people? In my experience as a GP I have about four or five pressing cases where we have older parents being pushed back by the agencies that should be engaging with them. Even if they cannot provide a pathway, they should at least show some sympathy for their position.

They were being pushed back to different doors and being asked to write letters repeatedly. The most stark example of that was an 80-year-old patient of mine who had her child, as he was, in five-day care. With high-dependency needs, he want into a community programme and was asked to leave it in the 1990s. They were told that residential care would be available if the budgets fell through. Budgets fell through after seven years. She was told eventually that the problem of residential care would be sorted out when she would die. That is exactly what happened. She broke her hip. She died on the operating table. The extended family, who had a 95-year-old father, came to me, and I told them they needed to stand back and hold up their hands. In ten days, it was sorted with residential care. Why are we not planning properly for this eventuality?