Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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As this question refers to service matters, I have asked the Health Service Executive (HSE) to respond to the Deputy directly, as soon as possible.

The Deputy will be aware that due to the ongoing industrial action by FORSA administrative and management grade staff in the HSE (which commenced on 6 October, 2023), delays remain in receiving answers to parliamentary questions and ministerial representations.

The HSE has been engaged with Forsa through the auspices of the WRC in an effort to resolve the dispute but a resolution has not been reached as of yet.

Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 178 and 179 together.

St John of God Community Services delivers essential disability and mental health services on a daily basis up and down the country. I want to acknowledge the challenging nature of this work and the high quality services provided by its staff.

A Sustainability Impact Assessment (SIA) process between the HSE and Saint John of God Community Services has been substantially concluded. In recent days, the Board of St John of God Community Services has requested specific proposals from the HSE to address the financial and operational sustainability of its Community Services.

It has indicated that without agreement on a way forward the organisation may be required to commence the process to transfer responsibility for service provision to the HSE.

At the outset, I wish to emphasise that St John of God Community Services has not made any decision to transfer its services to the HSE, and neither organisation wants that as an outcome.

Most importantly, the HSE has arranged to meet with St John of God Community Services in advance of their Board meeting of 25th January to further progress matters.

In the interim, the HSE has confirmed that it will continue to financially support the service - as it has done throughout the SIA process - to meet its financial liabilities on an ongoing basis.

This protects the continuity of services and ensures St John of God Community Services remains solvent and compliant with financial and accounting regulations.

More broadly, it is recognised that several voluntary providers of specialist disability services are in a weakened financial state as a result of complex historical arrangements, and current and emerging service delivery costs and pressures.

The financial challenges facing the voluntary sector are highly complex, arising from both historical issues around funding arrangements as well as emerging challenges due to changing profile of user need, higher safety and quality standards and general demographic pressures.

The HSE is committed to finding innovative solutions to these systemic challenges by continuing to work with the service providers, their staffs and service users. This is evident in the valuable work undertaken in the Sustainability Impact Assessment (SIA) of Saint John of God Community Services, underpinned by a partnership approach to problem solving adopted by the provider and HSE.

The HSE will identify systemic learnings from the SIA process as it works to deliver more efficient and effective models of service delivery. Opportunities to improve governance and performance across the sector will also be identified. In this way, the commitment of time and resources to the SIA process will enhance the ability of person-centred community services to sustainably meet service user needs.

The Government is working to progressively address these challenges. The Disability Capacity review in 2021 was an important step in mapping out and acknowledging the levels of unmet need in the sector. The recently published Disability Action Plan sets out our ambition for reform and expansion of disability services over the next three years.

This Government has demonstrated its continuing commitment to people with disabilities with increasing levels of funding since with a record €2.9 billion being provided in 2024 for specialist services, including €64m under the first year of the Disability Action Plan.

Alongside this significant investment, there remains a requirement to better understand operational and structural challenges being experienced across the sector.