Gabrielle McFadden (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Cuirim fáilte ar ais roimh an Aire. I commend Senator Dolan and the group for bringing forward this Private Members' motion. I welcome the Minister's intention to proceed with the implementation of A Vision for Change and, in particular, the report of the working group on congregated settings, which was a far-reaching indictment of the residential care settings for people with intellectual disabilities. We have had to wait nine years for the implementation of A Vision for Change and five years for any progress on the report on congregated settings. In the meantime, last year we saw a "Prime Time" investigation into Áras Attracta, which uncovered the appalling service many people with intellectual disabilities continue to receive at the hands of the State. I am now ashamed to say that in 2016, when almost all of the large residential centres in the United Kingdom have closed, nearly 50% of Irish citizens who receive residential services still live in outdated institutional settings. In many cases, the lives these people lead are more impoverished than those who receive no services at all. This is the real housing crisis for people with intellectual disabilities.

For any building to become a home, it must be imbued with a range of meanings, feelings and experiences by its occupants. A home is not merely a shelter. A real home has a hearth; a sense of warmth and comfort. A real home has heart; it is a place of emotional warmth and connection. A home is a place of privacy, where the occupant can control who can come in and who cannot. A real home has a sense of identity. It has roots and it is where one belongs. If we accept all of these as definitions of a home, then most people who live in a congregated setting are actually homeless. They may have shelter, but without a hearth, heart, privacy or identity, a house is not a home.

I implore the Minister. People with intellectual disabilities do not need bricks and mortar. They do not need politicians and planners to develop housing and then consign them beds. This is putting the cart before the horse. No one should be consigned to a house without first being allowed to articulate a vision for a better future. In this way, housing, like all aspects of the lives of people with disabilities, must be an interdepartmental concern with the voice of people with disabilities at the centre. Services for people with disabilities should not be service-centred, staff-centred or building-centred. Disempowerment has been the history of people with disabilities. Let it not be their future.