Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Good evening to the Minister of State and his officials. We hear a lot about data at this committee in the context of disabilities, and talk of poor data around disabilities for lots of reasons. However, I find it hard to understand how something can be planned for if there is no data. Senator Clonan mentioned Germany where a plan is put in place at an early age for a child identified with a disability. That does not happen across any sector in this country, and it should. Are specific targets set in the national housing strategy for how many houses will be built for disabled people? There are 1,500 people in congregated settings. There are more than 2,000 in nursing homes perhaps as a result of a stroke or an accident. There is no suitable housing for them, and that is why they end up there. We then have people living with elderly parents. I spoke to a 60-year-old woman last week. Her son is 35. She has cared for him for 35 years. He has complex disabilities. He is doubly incontinent. He needs help with feeding. She inquired two years ago with the HSE about residential care for him, and it is telling her nowhere is available locally. It should not be the case that something happens to become available. Something should be made to become available. I know that is not the local authority, but the HSE should be working with the local authority. I spoke with another mother who said her son is autistic. He is aged 26 or 27. She has been told there is a place in County Kildare. He lives in County Cavan. She does not want to cut off ties with her son. She wants him to attend his day service, see his family and that she can visit him and so on. Not creating housing in the local area is a huge issue as well. People are being offered residential places, often in an emergency situation, which is often up to two or three hours away from the locality. They are being moved from the local community, from their family and from the people they know. We need targets and we need them based on accurate data.

I have another question on local authorities. If someone applies for local authority housing, there will be a file. If I ring up my local authority and inquire about someone specifically, the staff will be able to say what the person's needs are. They need supported living, accessible housing or whatever it is. However, if I ask the housing officer how many people on their list need supported living - sheltered housing as they refer to it - or how many people need accessible housing or care packages, they do not have that figure. They literally have to go through everything. Is that being changed or addressed? We cannot have accurate targets if we do not know how many people require housing.

I turn to universal design. The NSAI is looking at a common standard for universal design. Can we have an update on that? Part M only ensures a home is wheelchair visitable, and not wheelchair livable. That needs to be updated, and I wonder where that is at. Again, if a certain percentage of homes were built to universal standard plus design, it would not only help disabled people but older people who develop mobility issues.

Approved housing bodies can access CAS funding to provide housing for disabled people, but they do not have the funding to provide the independent supports. They rely on another body or agency to do that. People are dependent on the HSE or another body to come up with those supports. It can also cause a problem and is something that needs to be addressed. The steering committees of most local authorities are working well. It is a big improvement, and I acknowledge that. It is the right way to go, but we still have a way to go because quite a lot of people require support. Are all policies and documents disability proofed? Does the Department engage with DPOs before new strategies are drawn up? By DPOs, I mean disabled people and their representative organisations, not service providers.

A lot of people have brought up housing adaptation grants, and I have one question on that. People have talked about how different local authorities differ in how they address issues and that there is a non-standardised approach. Some are very good, where there is an autistic child, in allowing the adaptation grant to be used to maybe build on an extra room as a sensory room, or where two children cannot share because one has----