Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

There is no way that by next March the Irish Wheelchair Association will be able to accommodate over 20,000 bed nights throughout the country. The Irish Wheelchair Association has already outlined that the facilities required are not there in many counties. In general, one gives three or six months notice to staff when it is planned to close a premises. These staff were given 28 or 29 days. On the matter of redundancy or redeployment, the staff have been told bluntly that the chance of redeployment is minimal to none. If the Irish Wheelchair Association ultimately wants to decide that it will not run this any more that is fine. However, it should give us space to work on it. To be fair, the owners of the buildings, the Divine World Missionaries, are willing to help out. A setting of drawings is required. It is possible to throw figures at anything and say something will cost €1.5 million or pluck them out of the sky, but let us see. The community, along with the Divine World Missionaries, Government help and the Irish Wheelchair Association must be given the space required to help immediately.

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