Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Minister of State on the HSE's winter plan. It is a very ambitious plan which takes into account the very challenging and potentially competing demands of Covid and non-Covid healthcare. I am proud that our Government has circled in red additional supports for those in the increased risk category, the elderly, homeless people and those with chronic illnesses, and provided them with home supports. Well done. I am very proud of that.

Much was done by the Government to support older adults with intellectual disabilities and mental health challenges in public and private long-term residential care facilities from the beginning of the crisis. Area crisis management teams were established, which were a vital component in the management of outbreaks within long-term care facilities through upskilling staff in infection control procedures and implementation, providing PPE and public health advice, the provision of staff and support for own governance. I note that this provision is being extended within this plan. Again, well done.

There always has to be a "but" and I have a little one, although it is a significant issue for those affected by it. I want to draw the Minister of State's attention to the disability non-residential care sector, which has been mentioned frequently in these Houses over the past 24 hours. I advocate for urgent additional supports for organisations in the voluntary and not-for-profit category, which support more than 26,000 people with intellectual disabilities and their families. While day care services have resumed, they are still at a reduced level. We need to urgently address the clients' and their families' needs for additional supports, as the current situation erodes all of their resilience. Families have been stoically and intensively supporting their family members for months while experiencing their own levels of frustration. Some felt they had been forgotten or left behind when additional supports were announced.

In my constituency of Dublin South-Central, there is a super organisation called WALK, which is headed up by its director of services, Catherine Kelly. It believes that people with disabilities have the right to live and contribute to the everyday life of their community. It supports the development and maintenance of relationships which lead to the attainment and sustainability of socially valuable roles and natural support networks, providing employment, training and community living opportunities and supports. However, it cannot do that work part time. In response to the lockdown in April, it began to develop online sessions for its day service attendees and while it has reopened in a limited capacity, observing social distancing and providing services to people with disabilities and their families, those individuals and their families need this service to run five days a week as that is the most appropriate way of tailoring to their needs. Nadine Vaughan, a mother whose adult son Sam is a service user with WALK, has commented to me that, while everyone is suffering with the effects of the pandemic and their lives have been curtailed, for people with special needs and their families, their only outlet is the day services. Their lives have not just been curtailed but they cut off at the waist. I ask the Minister of State to give urgent attention to disability day services.