Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Will the Minister give an assurance that disability services will not be affected by Covid-19?

I wish to tell the Minister about a situation that is close to my heart. Since 2007, I have been working alongside a number of families on the issue of a group home for people with physical and sensory disabilities in Carrickmacross. At that point, the families had already been campaigning for a number of years. They are predominantly parents of adult children who have been cared for their entire lives at home. Their parents wanted the group home built so that they could have the assurance of their children being looked after should anything happen.

Since 2007, their campaign has met frustration and delay followed by frustration and delay. I cannot count the number of interactions we have had with Monaghan County Council, the Respond housing association, which was subsequently tasked with building the home, the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government and, in latter years, the Department of Health and the HSE.

The building was completed in 2017. I have letters from the HSE dating back to 2011 assuring me that, once completed, it would operate the building. I have a 2016 letter in my hand from the HSE assuring me that, once completed, it would operate the facility. I have letters from every single year since indicating that the matter would be considered in the following year's Estimates. Two weeks ago, I submitted a parliamentary question to the Minister that was passed on to the HSE. The latest response I have received is that the HSE is unable to comment on an opening date due to the current Covid-19 pandemic. This is a disgrace. It is demeaning and degrading to the families involved who have campaigned for so long.

I have written to the Minister numerous times about this issue. Every time, it has been passed on to the HSE or a Minister of State. The Minister mentioned that he might not be in position in a week or two's time. Who knows? In this his final week, I call on him to speak to the people in the HSE whose attitude in their treatment of these families has been disgraceful and to instruct them to get their act together and provide the funding to open a state-of-the-art facility that is lying idle in Carrickmacross. I am pleading with the Minister to intervene in this matter personally.

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