Olivia Mitchell (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

I thank the Minister of the State for taking this debate. I wish to raise two issues regarding disability services. I acknowledge the Government wants to protect them but the overall reduction in the budget allocation for these services is 3.7%, 2% of which is supposed to be achieved through efficiencies. I am in favour of efficiencies and I accept that the headline salaries paid to the chief executive officers of so-called not-for-profit organisations are indefensible. However, only a few service providers offer such salaries. Most of the providers have pared back their costs as far as they can in the past four years of cutbacks. It is inevitable that front-line services will be impacted on, if not devastated.

One such organisation with which I am familiar is Cheeverstown. Its budget for 2012 has been reduced by €1.5 million while last year it was reduced by €700,000. The administrators are working within the confines of the recruitment ban, increments payable to all staff under the Croke Park agreement and an exceptional pensions bill. The organisation will lose three of their four social workers to early retirement. One of them at least will have to be replaced even though there is no budget for that position and Cheeverstown has to use the probation service to paint buildings. They have no flexibility to achieve efficiencies. The only way the new budget can be implemented is by cutting back on services. Due to the cutbacks, for example, respite services have been reduced by 40% and they probably will be terminated altogether this year. The Minister of State can imagine the impact this will have not only the disabled clients themselves but on their families who depend on respite care. All disabled people and service providers cannot be penalised because of high salaries paid to a few chief executive officers. For instance, hospitals are not penalised because consultants have high salaries, even though there is room for inefficiencies in this sector more than in the disability sector.

The most urgent issue is the plight of disabled school leavers this year. Normally, special provision is made for them but the service is being abolished. No provision will be made for the 650 school leavers this year. A number of the high performing clients will enter the education sector but those who are most handicapped depend on the health service and they will have no access to services. If they are forgotten by the health service, they will be forgotten by all of society, which is unacceptable.

There was a misunderstanding about what was agreed between the HSE and service providers, which was regrettable, but no matter where the blame for this lies, it does not lie with 18 year old severely disabled children. I cannot stand by while they and their families pay the price for this mistake. If the Government decided to cut all third level education, there would be a revolution and we would not even consider it and, therefore, I do not know why we consider it for people who need our help most. I can understand and accept cutbacks in the provision of transport, meals and so on. Everybody understands we are in difficulty but condemning a cohort of children to lifelong incarceration without services from next summer is indefensible and unacceptable. Many of these children are so disabled that they will not leave home again if they are abandoned now by the State.

I plead with the Minister of State in conjunction with her senior ministerial colleague to examine the overall health budget and to find relief within it for this cohort of children. Savings must be achievable in the overall health budget. The Minister does not have to single out this most disadvantaged group.

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