Mary Moran (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister. This is probably the toughest debate in which any of us will ever be involved and the decisions made this week will certainly compound matters. Previous speakers referred to letters received. We have all received the most heartfelt letters and I speak as a parent of a child with special needs on the autistic spectrum and who fits all of these criteria. The last thing I want to do and the last thing I am sure any of us wants to do is to make cuts. We do not want them; nobody does. I have met the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Joan Burton, and expressed my fears and concerns to her and she has gone into great detail in explaining the bigger picture. As Senator Feargal Quinn said, we have to look at the bigger picture.

The nub of the issue of the respite care grant is that there is no respite care service. The respite care services are absolutely appalling. I have a child who, if I am lucky, will sleep three hours a night and he is now 15 years of age. I could add the number of sleepless nights I have had and I then had to go and do my job. At one stage, to put bread on the table, I had to drive 70 miles a day. I did this for my children because I knew there was an end goal. That is where the problem lies. Respite care services have disappeared in the last year. In my own area, as I said to the Minister, a service was available and there was a children's respite care unit. I am talking about respite care services for children up to 18 years. The respite care unit only opens now seven days in every 31. God forbid if a child gets sick on those other days, if there is a bereavement, or an emergency.

The most frightening aspect for any parent of a child with special needs who needs respite care is that there is nothing available. There are many people who would gladly give up their respite care grant altogether if they could be assured proper respite care services were in place. As I have outlined in the House previously, I know of one person who is taking her first break in nine years to be a bridesmaid at her sister's wedding and who has now been told she cannot be guaranteed there will be a respite care service availabe in the area during that weekend - tough. She now has to make the decision to either, possibly causing hurt and pain, take the child to England or forgo the trip. That is only one of the thousands of e-mails that have absolutely broken my heart. I know from first-hand experience exactly what all of these people are going through. If nothing else comes out of this, we should get a proper respite care service up and running, for which the HSE would provide the funding and in which every penny would be accounted for.

Another vital issue concerns the need for an interdepartmental survey of respite care services and the breakdown between the services and the HSE. In my area I have tried to get a picture of what the services are like and who avails of them.

There are many people who would gladly avail of respite services if they were available to them.