Neale Richmond (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am grateful to Senator Costello for raising this important issue and offering me an opportunity to respond on behalf of the Minister, who, as per Senator Tully, finds herself in the Dáil answering oral questions. As a heads-up to Senator Scahill, the next Minister due in will also be in the Dáil in about ten minutes' time. I am sorry to say I have been entrusted with responding on behalf of both of them.

Day services, as the Senator laid out, are part of a suite of support services that enable people with specialist disability services needs to live within the community. As outlined by the Senator, the New Directions policy, published in 2013, lays out the manner in which adults with disabilities receive disability day services. This policy is underpinned by the values of person-centredness, community inclusion, active citizenship and equality. Each person should have access to flexible and outcome-driven supports to enable them to live a life of their choosing that meets their own wishes, aspirations and needs.

In 2025, the HSE projects it will provide day services to 20,600 individuals with a disability, up from just over 19,500 in 2024, together with a further 2,000 or more in rehabilitative training services. These services are provided at almost 1,300 locations around the country by 97 service provider agencies. Adult day services and rehabilitative training programmes are delivered by a combination of the HSE section 38 and section 39 organisations, as well as private providers.

The New Directions policy is implemented using a continuous quality improvement approach under the guidance of the New Directions implementation group and in line with New Directions standards published in 2025, which were referred to as interim standards at the time. These interim standards, or standards, continue to underpin the delivery of New Directions day services. They require service providers and key stakeholders to involve people with disabilities in the design, delivery, monitoring and evaluation of the services and supports provided.

The implementation plan for these standards was developed in conjunction with the disability sector and in consultation with HIQA. The first phase of the implementation plan for standards focused on developing a process of continuous quality improvement for day services in line with these standards, while the second phase is the development of a monitoring system that will provide a mechanism for assurance quality and safety update services. The HSE, working in partnership with the National Disability Authority, persons using adult day services and the disability umbrella bodies, is developing an outcomes-focused monitoring system for adult day services in support of implementing standards.

In preparation for a formal monitoring structure, all day service locations are required, as the Senator alluded to, to self-evaluate under the evaluation action service improvement process for continuous quality improvement, which features as part of their service agreements with HSE. The consultation on the proposed outcomes-focused monitoring framework for adult day services concluded in the third quarter of 2024 and included 1,800 family responses, separate consultations with 80 service users and 96 direct support staff, and nine focus groups with standard leads across all community health organisations. A series of trial monitoring visits has taken place in 2025 and these visits are due to continue into 2026. The aim of the trials is to test the monitoring approach in a range of adult day service locations, continuing consultation with stakeholders throughout, including having people with a disability as part of the assessment team carrying out the monitoring visits.

In regard to the Senator's more pertinent final question on laying out a hard timeline, there is extreme difficulty in this because the priority for the Minister is to make sure this is done right, is fit for purpose and reflects the true needs. Placing an arbitrary hard timeline is probably not the appropriate thing to do at this stage. However, I agree that this could perhaps move at a faster pace.