Colm Burke (Fine Gael)
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I welcome the Minister to the House. This issue follows on from an issue I raised four weeks about a family in the Cork city council area whose child has a physical and intellectual disability. While that family were advised in July 2008 by a city council official of work to be carried out to their home to accommodate their daughter this work has yet commenced.

The issue I am raising today is the need for appointment of a disability officer. The aforementioned case is not the only case with which I am dealing. In fact, there are 57 families in Cork awaiting work to their homes to accommodate people with disabilities. In my dealings with Cork city council I have had interactions with officials from the housing department, finance department, architects department and so on. No one person appears to be in charge of a file. As I speak, the child, whose family have been waiting seven years for work to be done to their home, is in intensive care in a hospital in Cork. This family have provided the highest standard of care for their child over many years. She has to be lifted out of bed every morning, washed and tube fed. It is wrong that this family is providing this level support and we are not giving them the additional support they need. Like me, when they contact Cork City Council they can find no one person to respond to their needs.

While there is a disability officer in place to deal with local authority staff who have a disability there is no disability officer to interact with local authority tenants who have disabilities. It is in that context that I tabled this matter this morning.

Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour)
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I hope that the young woman to whom Senator Burke referred is doing well and that her health improves. I hope also that the situation improves for her from a range of different perspectives.

On behalf of the Government and my colleague, the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Alan Kelly, who has responsibility in this area, I wish to highlight that one of the key aims of the Department is to ensure that the housing needs of all citizens, including people with disabilities, are met and that rights to equal treatment, in terms of how those housing needs are met, are upheld.

The Disability Act 2005 provides a statutory basis for making public services accessible by placing obligations on public bodies. These obligations include ensuring their buildings, services and information are available and accessible to people with disabilities.One of the specific requirements is that each local authority must appoint an access officer under section 26. This function is to provide or arrange for and co-ordinate the provision of assistance and guidance to people with disabilities in accessing services in local authority areas irrespective of where they live.

In addition to the statutory access officers, many local authorities also have a combination of equality officers, liaison officers, partnership co-ordinators, equality action teams and social inclusion units. In order to support local authorities, the Local Government Management Agency, LGMA, provides a range of advice and guidance on the delivery of services for people with disabilities, fosters best practice in that regard and operates the access officer network.

The Government's national housing strategy for people with a disabilities, which was published in 2011, sets out a broad framework for the delivery of housing for people with disabilities through mainstream housing policy. The vision of the strategy is to facilitate access for people with disabilities to the appropriate range of housing and related support services, delivered in an integrated and sustainable manner that promotes equality of opportunity, individual choice and independent living. As part of the implementation of the strategy, dedicated local housing advice centres are being developed at local authority level that will provide integrated and accessible advice and information to support all people with their housing and related support needs. These centres will complement the various other information and support services that are available to people with a disability at a local authority level who may wish to discuss their housing circumstances, be they local authority tenants or those living in another setting.

The Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government provides funding to local authorities for various social housing supports, including adaptations and extensions to the social housing stock to meet the needs of local authority tenants with disabilities or to address serious overcrowding. Funding provided by the Department meets 90% of the cost of such works, with each local authority providing the remaining 10%. The Department is liaising with all local authorities in respect of requirements for 2015 in this regard. The administration of the funding locally is a matter for each local authority, including decisions on the projects to be implemented.

I assure Senator Burke I will ensure that this information finds its way to the Minister. The circumstances outlined by the Senator are difficult. It is unconscionable that a young woman in such circumstances would wait so many years, given the fact that it appears that grant approval has been given to the family. While I do not know all of the details, the Minister and I will do our best to engage with the local authority to ensure that the family gets the service to which it is entitled.

Colm Burke (Fine Gael)
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I wish to raise two points. I am not blaming the Minister or the Department, but no one in the local authority is taking responsibility. The family has grown so frustrated that it has stopped talking to people. It was by pure accident that I came across the issue. I have been dealing with it for the past nine months. I have helped the family to file a complaint with the Ombudsman for Children, which is the only route available to it.

I spoke with COPE, which provides support services for people with disabilities. It looks after more than 1,200 people in its facilities in Cork and supports the family in question. COPE told me that, when it dealt with Cork City Council, as far as the council was concerned this was just a case of a family with a number and, while the council accepted that works needed to be done, it did not have the necessary funding. I understand that the council was allocated €361,000 last year for this type of work, but I cannot get information on what happened to that funding. Some of it may have been returned to the Department.

There is a lack of accountability. The family has been left to look after the child. The Evening Echocarried a front page story on it and "Drivetime" has done a piece on it, as have all of the local radio stations, but no one will take responsibility and sort the problem out within, for example, the next three months. My information is that the family is on the list and the works may get done at some point during the next two to three years. That is not acceptable.

Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour)
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I thank Senator Burke for his contribution on this important issue. I understand how frustrated he is, as the family's Oireachtas representative, that nothing seems to be in the pipeline. Local authorities and all public agencies need to be specifically conscious of the needs of people with disabilities when providing services.

The Senator seemed to imply that an amount of money had been returned by Cork City Council to the Department as an underspend in housing adaptation grants. That is not the position we want and the Minister, Deputy Kelly, is anxious to ensure that the resources he makes available to local authorities are spent as they should be, namely, on improving housing stock and giving access to the best housing stock for people with disabilities.

Perhaps I misinterpreted the Senator, but I understood that the grant had been approved in 2008. I assure him that I will bring the matter to the Minister's attention. This was not necessarily the Senator's aim, as he would like to see an improved system for people with disabilities and the appointment of disability officers in local authorities, but all public and civil servants in the system should be acutely conscious of the needs of people with disabilities who expect and are entitled to the types of service that the Senator outlined.

Colm Burke (Fine Gael)
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I wish to clarify something. In the letter issued to the family in July 2008, Cork City Council accepted that works needed to be done.

Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour)
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I see.

Colm Burke (Fine Gael)
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The plans were drafted and provided in November 2008, yet here we are.

Denis O'Donovan (Fianna Fail)
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The Senator's case is well made.