Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North-Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister and welcome the initiatives. I spoke to the Ministers, Deputies Foley and Browne, in recent weeks and I knew that a plan was coming together. However, as many Deputies will know, I am a cynic in here. I do not understand how we are having this discussion in 2026 and how no one in the various Departments, but particularly the Department of disabilities, had a light bulb go off at some stage and realise that the Departments were not meeting the level of need. As the Minister of State read out from the speech she was given, there is an unmet need. We all know it. I will give the Minister of State an idea of the numbers. In June 2025, 1,389 people were awaiting residential placement. That was up from 776 in 2019, a 79% increase in five or six years. Did no one in the various Departments not realise there was a problem, given the nearly 100% increase in the demand for residential places? I do not even have time to discuss respite support.

It is welcome that the Ministers are getting together and that a plan is going to be in place, but it takes time to build these houses and deliver these units. If the plan started this year, it would be a couple of years before we saw those units being turned over. The budget allocation will provide for nearly 200 places, but in 2023, only 43 new residential places were provided in the entire country. It was a pitiful amount. What these people are asking for is their right, as they all have a right to housing. Some of them are well capable of living independently. Some require round-the-clock care. It is that diverse a cohort.

There are two matters I will mention that I would like the Minister of State to take back to the Minister, the first of which is decongregation.

I understand why we did it, but if you talk to the parents who have children with intellectual disabilities, including adult children, they will say that they want a setting where they feel their daughters or sons can be safe. Some of them want to live in a gated community, and some want to be surrounded by the elderly. Locking these people away in apartment blocks is not the right way, just for the sake of decongregation. We need to have a proper debate about this.

Cork city and county councils have delivered their targets of 20% for people with disabilities. However, it is important that we distinguish between people with physical disabilities and intellectual disabilities in counting those numbers.

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