Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I absolutely disagree with that contention because if we look at the facts, 10,023 households directly benefited from interventions by the Department with regard to disabilities. We will increase this to more than 10,500 in 2021 because of the significant increase in the budget in recent years. With regard to local authority delivery, a steering group has been established in each of 31 local authorities that can assess why delivery is not as expected if they are not drawing down their funding. This is supposed to meet four times a year. Our review on national policy will be implemented next year. As I said, we will have a meeting before the end of 2020 in this regard. Significant funding is there and it is up to the local authorities to drive that funding and spend it, and up to the groups and processes they have in place to ensure the money is spent properly.

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