Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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2481. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality if she will provide an update on the positions and teams unfilled for community neuro rehabilitation teams, by region, in tabular form; the plans to address this; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [43553/25]

Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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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.

Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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2482. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality her plan, timeline and cost to deliver 222 extra posts in adult multidisciplinary therapies as promised in the action plan for disabilities; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [43554/25]

Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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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.

Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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2483. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality her plan, timeline and cost to deliver around 1,200 additional day service places each year, to ensure places for school leavers who require them; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [43555/25]

Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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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.

Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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2484. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality her plan, timeline and cost to deliver 800,000 additional personal assistance hours, and 110,000 additional home support hours respite services, as promised in the action plan; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [43556/25]

Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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The HSE provides a range of assisted living services including personal assistance (PA) and home support services to support individuals to maximise their capacity to live full and independent lives.

The Action Plan for Disability Services 2024-2026 commits to delivering 800,000 additional hours of PA and 110,000 additional hours of home support.

To support the fulfilment of these commitments, €2m was provided in 2024 for the delivery of 80,000 additional PA hours on 2023 with approximately 1.85m hours delivered to over 2,700 disabled persons in total last year. A further €3m was provided in Budget 2025 to deliver 95,000 additional hours, demonstrating DCEDIY’s ongoing investment in PA service provision.

Budget 2025 also provided approximately €1.3m in funding to support the delivery of 40,000 additional home support hours on 2024, with a target of 3.8m hours to be delivered by year end.

Further increases in service provision will be considered as part of the estimates process for Budget 2026.

Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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2485. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality her plan, timeline and cost for continued expansion of respite services, including alternative respite options such as 500 new community-based residential care places to replace disability care in large institutional and campus-based settings, around 900 additional residential care places to tackle unmet need and ensure supply keeps pace with demographic change as promised in the action plan; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [43557/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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The targets noted in the Deputy’s question are set by the Action Plan for Disability Services 2024-2026. The Action Plan represents a national strategy for capacity increases and service and policy reform in disability services and was informed by findings from the Disability Capacity Review, published in 2021, in addition to cross-Governmental input and an extensive public consultation.

It is intended to address the capacity deficits identified in the Capacity Review in a phased approach, meaning the Action Plan for Disability Services 2024-2026, represents an implementation plan for the first phase and will be followed by a successor plan in 2027. The Action Plan is a living document and will be reviewed and updated in the light of priorities, policy considerations and the funding available under this and subsequent Budgets.

The planned improvements require additional investment which would see current expenditure grow by 25% over the 2023 levels indicated in the three-year Plan.

Furthermore, the planned expansion of residential services will require significant housing investment (supported by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage). It is important to note that, since the publication of the Plan, the cost of service provision has risen and the scale of the uplift required to meet targets has increased in tandem.

Action Plan progress is reliant on a variety of dependencies to enable delivery, such as funding, workforce, capacity at an organisational level within service providers, and the availability of an adequate supply of housing to meet the need for residential services.

A total of €3.2 billion has been allocated for HSE Disability Services in Budget 2025. This amounts to an increase of 11.5% in funding, some €333m, on funding provided in 2024.

This record amount of funding will support the realization of the Action Plan through funding for new residential services, day service places, personal assistance and home support hours, developments in children’s services, respite and community neuro-rehabilitation, as well funding to further progress decongregation.

The Programme for Government sets a number of commitments to advance the rights and improve the lives of people with disabilities including to provide additional residential places and new emergency residential placements and to progressively increase funding for respite services.

To support these commitments, Budget 2025 provided €107m to residential services for the development of new placements. €79m of this will meet the incremental cost of new residential services provided in 2024 and €28m is additional funding for additional/new residential responses in 2025. Budget 2025 also provided an additional €14m to respite services to cover demographic growth and the full year cost of measures commenced in 2024.

From 2020 to May 2025, 752 new residential places have been provided to people with disabilities including 220 places in 2024 and 67 from January to May 2025. These additional places bring the total residential places, currently being provided by the HSE and contracted service providers to people with disabilities, to 8,730 - an increase from 8,146 in 2021.

Since 2020, there has been a 58% increase in funding into the respite area which has supported thousands of additional respite sessions. In 2024, approximately 7000 people availed of respite services.

Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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2486. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality her plan, timeline and cost for the option of personalised budgets for those with disabilities, giving individuals greater choice and control over how they are supported; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [43559/25]

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. A key strength of the personalised budget model is the enhanced autonomy and flexibility it offers. Individuals’ can select services that are most relevant and meaningful to them, defining the quality, scope, and delivery of their supports.

To test the delivery of personalised budgets in an Irish context, the Personalised Budget Demonstrator Pilot was established in 2019.

In May 2025, the Demonstrator Pilot commenced its evaluation phase which is expected to conclude by year end. Led by the National Disability Authority, the evaluation will provide critical insights into the barriers and facilitators to rolling out personalised budgets on a larger scale and will therefore inform next steps towards the development of an effective model of personalised budgets model in Ireland.