Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The reason I wrote to the Taoiseach was because he was not able to answer my questions. I hope he will do so quickly and I hope he does not send me a "Dear John" letter.

According to a response received last night to a parliamentary question from an Teachta Louise O'Reilly, our health spokesperson, the HSE will have provided 14,293 fewer overnight respite sessions and 591 fewer day respite sessions this year than it did last year. When that is put into the package announced yesterday, the additional €10 million is supposed to provide 19,000 respite nights. In effect that means the HSE will be providing an additional 4,707 respite sessions over what it provided in 2016.

The Taoiseach should figure that out. That is the way it works out. If that is not accurate, he should tell me, but if it is accurate, does he agree with me that it is not good enough? There is a lot of catching up to be done on this issue. This is about citizens who have rights and who want to be treated as citizens despite the fact that they have disabilities. They need to be given full services, and the Taoiseach's Government needs to fix itself in terms of that function.

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