Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

A headline figure of €336 million in the budget sounds fantastic but I, along with disability organisations and disabled people find that the lack of clarity around this figure is really frustrating. We do not know if this is for an existing level of service, for capital spend or for current spend, for this year or for that year. I would really appreciate some more clarity on this. The Minister of State mentioned a figure of €40.3 million for day services, adult multidisciplinary services and neuro-rehabilitation services. However, that is for this year and next year. We would love to know exactly what is new in this budget for next year. I have just come from a meeting of the Joint Committee on Disability Matters where we had witnesses looking for neuro-rehabilitation services and talking about how important they are. We have a strategy but it has not been implemented. Some very welcome work has been done on it but there areas of the country that need those services to help people with neurological conditions.

There is an allocation of €25 million to increase personal assistance and home support hours but also to fund the pay parity section 39 wage agreement. Does the Minister of State have a figure for that?

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