Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There are 130 families in my constituency in the South Dublin County Council area who urgently need adaptations to their local authority properties. These are tenants who, either because of physical disabilities or because of accident and injury, desperately need stair lifts, walk-in showers or home extensions. They need these through the local authority disability and mobility adaptations grant scheme. The problem is their grants cannot be processed because the HSE, in the relevant community care area, does not have the necessary occupational therapy staff to provide the reports.

What is particularly galling for those in my constituency in Clondalkin and Lucan is that across the Naas Road in the neighbouring HSE community care area, which is also in the same local authority, the HSE has the staff to progress the adaptations. A resident of Clondalkin today cannot have his or her application progressed whereas a resident in Tallaght can have his or hers progressed. That is causing a particular problem.

This is not a new issue. This difficulty has been ongoing since 2015. I was on South Dublin County Council at the time and we raised it with the HSE locally. We raised it with the local authority management. There had been ongoing negotiations between the HSE and the heads of service in South Dublin County Council to try and get this issue resolved.

In some cases, we are talking about families who have not been able to have their application progressed for as many as 24 months. One woman, for example, has a stair lift that is no longer functioning and is in urgent need of that repair, and she has not been able to progress that application for almost two years.

Another family have had shower works completed upstairs but urgently need a stair lift to allow the family member access those adaptations. However, they cannot have that progressed. Not only had I raised the issue when I was on the council but I had asked my party colleague, Deputy Mary Lou McDonald, to raise it with the Minister in the previous Government as far back as 2015.

More recently, South Dublin County Council, to try to progress the matter, offered to pay half the cost of these occupational therapy, OT, reports on an interim basis until such time as the Health Service Executive, HSE, was able to recruit staff. While the HSE has given some indication that it might be willing to deal with that, the reality is that the 130 families who desperately need these adaptations still have not got their cases progressed.

Does the Minister believe it is acceptable that, depending on where they live, a family can have an urgent adaptation grant progressed, that is, somebody in Tallaght, while somebody literally across the road in Clondalkin cannot? Does she not accept that, effectively, this is a geographical discrimination that does not just affect constituents in Dublin Mid-West but in other HSE service areas?

The most important question is what the Minister and the Department intend to do. How will they ensure that the relevant HSE community care organisation, area 7, has the staff it needs to progress these cases as a matter of urgency? What assurances can the Minister of State give to the families, some of whom will be watching these proceedings this evening, that she is doing everything in her power to ensure they will not have to wait any longer before the OT reports are available and their applications can be progressed?

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