Mr. Diarmuid Devereux:

I will address the non-residential units first. The Senator touched on both. On day centres, St. Michael's House has a five-year properties plan and has invested heavily in our existing premises. There are a number of legacy issues and HSE estates in CHO 9 has been extremely helpful and supportive. There are very significant challenges in providing fit-for-purpose centres for the provision of day services, especially for people with higher support needs. It is about having centres that are integrated into the community and inclusive and about moving out of industrial estates and things like that and into other areas. We are finding that places like retail parks and business parks are not suitable for the provision of day centres. It is extremely challenging to find suitable places to operate our services from. However, we developed four ASD centres last year. Deputy Ellis referred to this previously. We have another eight new centres in the pipeline in the moment and a further six of our existing centres are being upgraded to provide additional capacity. Finding locations that are fit for purpose is challenging, however.

I will try to answer the Senator's question on residential properties. Are we going to meet requirements? I do not believe so. I do not think any service provider is. The main reason is that it is so difficult to find suitable accommodation for community housing. Sourcing independent living units is also challenging but it is easier. In trying to find community housing, especially in the north Dublin area, we see an awful lot of high-density developments, that is, high-rise apartment blocks and high-density housing estates. Community housing is very bespoke. It involves a number of people living under the one roof, supported by staff. Buildings of quite a significant size are needed and these should ideally follow the principles of universal design for housing or the IWA's best practice access guidelines, which are quite bespoke and quite different from the standard social housing model.