Ms Derval McDonagh:

I thank the committee for its patience with the frog in my throat. Going back to the point about people living in institutional settings, we know that things are beginning to improve in some areas - that is a fact - but the truth remains there is a large group of people who are still living in institutions and who have never had a choice as to where they lived or who they lived with. Therefore, there may be people living in large group homes where there could be ten, 20, 30, 40 or 50 people living in a campus-type setting. I ask the committee to imagine any one of us being told, "You have to live in this place for the rest of your life, you have to live with these people and there is no chance you will ever have an opportunity to move out of here, even if you are deeply unhappy, even if you cannot stand the people you live with and even if you are deeply frustrated by the people you live with and that is leading to you lashing out or expressing your frustration in various ways." This is captured in HIQA reports quite a bit. We see things about safeguarding and hear terms like "peer-to-peer abuse". These are all terms we use ourselves, but actually, what is happening is violence between people living in these homes and houses, and there is no opportunity for those individuals to move out. We remain with 2,400 people living in these types of settings. Some are at different points on the journey in respect of human rights, but we need to see huge progress and more individualised supports for people. It is completely unreasonable. In no other walk of life would we ask people to stay living together without any choice or control over their lives. It just would not happen. We would not tolerate it. Yet for people with intellectual disabilities that has happened for decades and continues to happen on our watch. If there were an ask from the committee, it would be to reinvest efforts in - I hate the term "decongregation", although it is part of policy and the language around policy - supporting people to move into homes of their own with choice and control.