Ms Teresa Mallon:

I agree with my colleagues that everyone in the disability sector welcomes complaints. They have complaints procedures in place. They are aligned to the HSE your service, your say national policy, which is important to note as well. The sector is very good at working on developing accessible versions of procedures and policies to accommodate people's individual needs, including communication needs, easy read and assisted technology in that regard. Again, across the disability sector, there are advocacy groups in place. As Mr. Meany mentioned, some services have got this over the line and others are on a journey in ensuring that people with disabilities are represented at board level, are feeding directly into boards in the context that their voice is represented at that level and are feeding into the strategic decisions of the organisation.

That is a journey and more training and more input and supports are required by the organisation to make that happen. There is a very strong focus within organisations in that regard.

On the position post COVID, to be clear, prior to COVID, the majority of people with a residential placement within an organisation were leaving their home in the morning and going to a day service. Then, while COVID was active, people were remaining at home and in most cases, day services closed. The staff was redeployed to work in residential services. Then, when society opened up, this posed a great challenge because the day service staff needed to return to the day services. It is fair to say that in the majority of cases, the residential services are not staffed or funded for staffing during the day, which is causing a big challenge. In addition, we need to respond to people whose preference it is to remain in their homes, with human rights at the centre of our approach. If somebody who is ageing does not want to return to day services, that is his or her right. We want people to stay in their homes. We as a sector and the federation would welcome a review of this post COVID, to really capture the numbers of people we are talking about here, as well as what the implications are from a human rights perspective, from a will and preference perspective and from a personal perspective. What could the challenges be, what might be the costs and what resources or funding would be required to address this? A review is something we would strongly welcome to move this on because it is a real burning issue at the moment across the sector. I am not sure if Dr. Harnett wants to come in.