Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Lombard for raising this important matter today. The HSE provides specialist disability services, including day services and rehabilitative training, to people with disabilities who require such services. While day service funding does not include transport, some transport supports are provided by the HSE or funded agencies on a discretionary basis, and a variety of transport solutions are pursued in different community healthcare organisation, CHO, areas. To be quite honest, this discretionary basis is the nub of the issue. We are speaking about a remote part of Ireland, no different than if I were speaking about a remote part of east Galway, where we do not have a DART, Luas, metro or other such service. This is what we are speaking about. It is about trying to stop the sticking plaster approach. This is what Senator Lombard is asking me about today. To be fair, on the previous occasion this arose, I intervened. I do not think it is the role of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul to solve this problem. It is incumbent on the Government and agencies out to come up with a solution.

There was hope there might be a way to work with Local Link, as it has services, but to be realistic this will not work for the 11 vulnerable young adults. There are various destinations involved. We are looking for pick-up points whereas under the public service obligation there are destination points. These are two very different conversations. We have to bottom out completely whether there is extra scope in the Local Link service whereby it can run an additional service. I would look to see whether Local Link has the flexibility to provide an additional run in the morning and in the evening to cater solely for these young adults, with no other passengers on board. To be very fair to the chief officer of the South/South West Hospital Group, Tess O'Donovan, she has given me and all of the families an extension of three months to try to come up with a permanent solution.The most important thing the Senator can bring back to families when he leaves today is that we have funding in place for three months in order that we might bottom out a solution. However, we need a unique solution that will not be discussed every three to six months on the floor of the Dáil or the Seanad. We need to find a permanent solution to address the needs of young people going to rehabilitation training, young people attending coaction and young people going to the National Learning Network. Young people at different levels of development need to be supported and at some stages there might be a transition period. For example, they might need a personal assistant, PA, at the start to help them to learn how to use public transport and then they might become accustomed to doing so independently. Some young people will always need PA support no matter what. We need to look at it in the round.

It is about what needs to be put in place. It is not about funding. A permanent solution to providing access to travel must be put in place. I would like to think that if we have an operator running a route, we could work with it for a morning and evening expansion of the service or that a bespoke service like the HSE initiatives in counties Kerry and Leitrim could be put in place. They are run under the open routes model. The HSE designed it. Perhaps the Senator's remote area is an example of where it needs to be piloted, operationalised and looked at as a permanent solution funded by the National Transport Authority, NTA, in conjunction with the Department of Health. The same bus route could double up to bring adults to day services, such as dementia clinics, later in the day or to bring them to hospital appointments. We need to look at, not only disability but the wider community context.