Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thought an action team would have been established with resources to go to every centre in the country similar to Áras Attracta and carry out a thorough examination of practices and culture, to give that assurance to relatives and to affirm the basic human rights of people living in other centres. I am not casting any aspersions on the hundreds of good staff out there who do good work.

The Taoiseach did not address my most important question about the report of the congregated settings group, which is fundamental to last night’s programme because it recommends that the country should move from congregated settings to a community model over a seven-year period. It states:

... the Working Group took the view that the case for taking action now to address the situation of people living in congregated settings is powerful and unassailable. The ethical case to move people from isolation to community, and in some cases, from lives lived without dignity, is beyond debate.

That report involved everybody and was published in 2011. Will the Taoiseach give me some sense of the progress on the 32 recommendations of that report? Where are they now?

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