Liam Quaide (Cork East, Social Democrats)

Decongregation was briefly touch on. I know decongregation has not been the main focus of today's discussion but I am interested in hearing from anyone on the panel their opinion on how decongregation is going in this country.

Yesterday, I received a response to a parliamentary question that showed increasing numbers of people with intellectual disabilities were living in facilities that had been privately outsourced. The outsourced services now make up 15% of residential services. That is up from 8% at the end of 2021, 9% at the end of 2022 and 12% in 2024. I know anecdotally that some of those residents live very far from home, hundreds of kilometres away in some cases. The HSE has told me that it does not keep data on distances from home even though detachment from one's community is a clear breach of rights under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD. That is very concerning. Some of these residential services are also in quite remote locations, so residents are not integrated even in a new community for them. We are on a worrying trajectory. I am interested in hearing the witnesses' views.