Joanna Byrne (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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677. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth to provide an update on the findings and recommendations from the personalised budget pilot; her next steps to deliver an effective personalised budget model; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [31947/25]

Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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A personalised budget is an amount of funding allocated to an eligible person with a disability to enable them to make their own arrangements to meet specified support needs.

On foot of a commitment in the Programme for Partnership Government (2016) to introduce personalised budgets for persons with disabilities in Ireland, the then Minister of State for Disabilities, Finian McGrath T.D., established the Personalised Budgets Taskforce on 20 September 2016.

Published in 2018, the report of the Taskforce on Personalised Budgets recommended that the Department of Health and the Health Service Executive should establish demonstration projects to test the delivery of personalised budgets in an Irish context with a view to identifying the best approach for the wider roll-out of the model following the initial demonstration phase.

In 2019, the Department of Health formed an Oversight Group for the demonstration project which included representatives from the Health Service Executive and the National Disability Authority. Following the Group’s completion of an implementation plan, the first phase of the demonstrator pilot was launched in August 2019 with expressions of interest for participation sought from disabled adults in receipt of Health Service Executive funded specialist disability services.

In 2023, responsibility for specialist disability services transferred from the Department of Health to the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (now the Department of Children, Disability and Equality), and with it, responsibility for the Personalised Budget Demonstrator Pilot.

As of 12 February 2025, there are 130 active participants in the Pilot, with 50 people participating in the final Stage 4, the “Living Life Phase”.

The evaluation of the Pilot has commenced, led by the National Disability Authority, and is expected to be completed by the end of the year. The evaluation will inform next steps in developing an effective model of personalised budgets in Ireland.