I thank the Ceann Comhairle for selecting this Topical Issue matter this evening. I start by acknowledging the role that family carers play, firstly in society, in keeping people in their own home, where the vast majority want to be kept, and secondly in the economy, to which they contribute €20 billion per annum.

The State of Caring 2024 report was based on a survey of 2,127 carers. These are people who are providing full-time care, often for more than 90 hours per week, for children, adults with additional needs and older people. The survey, therefore, covered all types of carers. Despite the many positive investments that have been made over the years, the report was very worrying. It found that 72% of respondents said they had never been offered respite; 49% are paying privately for services the HSE should be providing, such as occupational therapy, OT, physiotherapy and assessments of needs for children with disabilities; 29% cut basic essentials, such as food and heat, because they do not have the necessary funds to pay for them; and 76% are moderately or severely lonely.

Not all of this is the Minister of State's responsibility and it cuts across many Departments. One area that is the Minister of State's responsibility is that of respite. It is an area I have raised many times with her in the past. The Muiríosa Foundation in Mullingar is still not providing respite and not using a community house on certain weekends of the year. I know the Minister of State made an intervention previously that improved the situation, but there is still uncertainty.

Last year, a family in my constituency was offered 14 days of summer cover in a house for day-time respite. This year, they were offered only seven days. I brought the case to the attention of the Minister of State's office earlier this week. Family Carers Ireland is suggesting, and I agree with it, that we need a national audit of our respite beds and a national register in order that people can plan for when they are getting respite. They need to know when they are getting respite, they need to be able to plan and they need certainty in their lives.

On the issue of pay, carers are the only welfare recipients who actually work for their payment. I did not realise until a couple of weeks ago that a carer living alone does not qualify for the living alone allowance or fuel allowance. People who have been on employment benefit for in excess of 12 months qualify for the fuel allowance. That anomaly needs to be addressed. Given the money carers are saving the State, the Government should abolish means testing.

On housing adaptation, the level of grants has not kept pace with the cost of construction. The income threshold needs to be reviewed. It is based on the last full year of income. What if someone suddenly gets sick and their previously good income changes to a social welfare payment? That is not taken into consideration and it needs to change.

The reason I raise this matter is that it was published and received considerable media coverage today. It is also an issue I picked up very frequently as I canvassed with local election candidates in recent weeks. There are people who are not getting the necessary supports. Others are extremely lonely in their homes. The Government needs set up some sort of task force to ensure a whole-of-government approach is taken to respond to what has been identified in this report.

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue and providing me with the opportunity to discuss the matter. As Minister of State with responsibility for disabilities, respite services for people with disabilities and their families are a key priority for me. In outlining his case, the Deputy correctly stated that not all of this falls under my remit. There is respite for older people as well. However, my response specifically addresses respite for people with disabilities.

This Government is continuing to expand the provision of respite services available. In 2024 alone, new development funding of €15 million has been provided to ensure that respite provision continues to expand significantly across the country. This will rise to €25 million in a full year. In the coming weeks, I will publish a respite investment plan, which will detail how this funding is being utilised to support respite for children and adults around the country. This will increase the level of respite provision through a mix of provision of alternative respite options. These include summer camps and evening and Saturday clubs, overnight centre-based or residential respite; using existing overnight residential capacity to the maximum extent; and providing additional overnight respite capacity where this is needed.

In 2018, funding for respite service provision totalled €53.5 million, while in 2024 the figure is north of €110 million. In terms of overnight respite, this has translated to provision increasing from 87,000 overnights accessed by people with a disability to 151,000 overnights last year, as well as 45,000 day-only sessions. The total number of people in receipt of respite services in 2023 was 6,137 individuals.

With this increased funding, the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, in tandem with the HSE, is working with me to support different forms of respite, including overnights, day provision, after-school clubs and weekend activities. Particular attention is being focused on areas that are below the national average regarding the availability of respite.

I acknowledge that demographic challenges associated with the increase in the number of people living with a disability, the increase in age and life expectancy and the changing needs of people with a disability have all led to a need for increased respite services. The co-ordinated focus will be on expanding existing overnight capacity as well as providing significant additional investment in alternative forms of respite. What that means, when translated into English, is that in some services, respite will be available four over seven nights. This means the service is open four out of seven nights in the week. My respite plan is to ensure we move to seven over seven nights and also to use these buildings to provide a day respite support.

In the past, we did not have a suite of measures for respite. The whole purpose of the respite plan I will publish is to ensure we provide everything from after-school programmes and early years education, such as Little Wonders in Cavan, to after-school programmes in mainstream schools. Sanas Ireland in Finglas in Dublin, for example, is supporting 85 children who have complex needs on a weekly basis as well as providing Saturday clubs, equine therapy and alternative respite. The co-ordinated focus will be on expanding existing overnight capacity as well as providing significant additional investment in alternative forms of respite to meet the different needs. Every effort is being made to support the provision of respite on an equitable basis and to expand provision in all forms. When we talk about respite, we mean equity of access to it regardless of people's location or who shouts the loudest so that all children have equal access to respite.

I welcome the Minister of State's response. I do not for a minute doubt her commitment to this area. However, when we have a situation where the State has made capital investments into respite houses and they are not being used 24-7, around the clock, it is simply inexcusable. Nobody should be able to stand over that.

A mother of an adult child with a range of disabilities wrote:

Robert, as far as I am aware, it is available all weekdays and the weekend arrangement of one weekend each per month for adults and children [It is closed two weekends every month]. Weekdays can be requested but not guaranteed. Weekends cannot be requested due to the high demand and limited availability. It seems to me pot luck if you get one. The high volume of clients along with emergency admittance further complicates things.

It is not fair for people who are providing full-time care that they cannot have certainty, cannot plan and cannot have access to respite. That needs to change now.

The Minister of State mentioned summer camps, which I welcome. I gave the example of a family who urgently needed this type of respite service and were offered 14 days last year. This year, that offer has been cut to seven days. At a time when the Government is increasing funding in this area, that does not seem right.

I speak to senior citizens who are living on their own in rural areas. I met many people who were unaware that they could go to a day-care centre. Nobody is going out to look for these people, engage with them and offer them the service.

Some of these people are lonely. One woman, when I asked her whether she would be interested in going into the Mullingar day-care centre once a week and told her that the bus passes by the head of the road, cried and said that there are some weeks she does not see anybody from the beginning of the week to the end. Why are the officials not out ensuring that people are accessing the services that are there?

I accept the Minister of State is not responsible for all these areas but we need a whole-of-government approach in tackling the issues that have been identified in this report and that I am identifying here. I would ask the Minister of State to bring it back to both her senior Cabinet colleagues and her Minister of State colleagues to see what we can do to make sure that we address the issues that have been highlighted in the report today.

I thank the Deputy and I take on board all that he said. I welcome the fact that the Taoiseach today, on the floor of the Dáil, committed that he is meeting Family Carers Ireland within the next two weeks to discuss the full report there.

It is unfortunate that when the Deputy knocks on a door, he has the experience that people are unaware of the fabulous day-care services that are available, and where there is access to transport. The Deputy is correct that there needs to be a co-ordinated response to that.

Speaking within my own brief of where we have respite in disabilities, which was one of the key areas that was also drawn on within the report, it is having equality of access and having a co-ordinated approach to ensure that we can map out where services are being provided in order that families know when a child gets a diagnosis that there are camps available, at Christmas in winter and any time of the year, that there are equal opportunities for their little ones to be able to participate in and after-school availability, but also ensuring that by providing adequate respite, it means we prevent us from having emergency cases where family relationships break down and where we end up in crisis where families need access to emergency departments, which are not fit for purpose for a family in crisis, or where families end up not collecting a child or an adult from respite because they are absolutely worn out. I totally take that on board. That is why I am doing a complete respite plan where, it will be measured, where we will know what services are not opening even though we are funding them or what services are built and not working at full capacity. While I acknowledge we have a staffing issue and recruitment is an issue, it is not the whole problem. There has to be a cultural change and a step change to ensure, where we are spending €110 million, that those services are provided for those who are most vulnerable.

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, for coming in this evening. It is appropriate that the Minister of State is here to answer this question as it was she and I who started on this saga nearly three years ago. It has been a long arduous three years, as I have said.

The Minister of State will be aware of the property I am referring to here. The Minister of State visited it on site. She saw the potential of the site. The Minister of State saw how whatever organisation will inherit or lease it in time from Cork City Council can expand into the future. It is right beside a public park. It will be put to good use in time by whoever benefits from it.

As I have said, we met the HSE estates engineers on-site nearly three years ago. At that point, we were hopeful that the building, albeit occupied by the National Ambulance Service at the time, could be acquired by Cork City Council or some other stakeholder such as the Rainbow Club, which we were with when visiting that day and which is run by Karen and Jon O'Mahony.

We met that day with the HSE estates engineers to discuss the possibility of that building becoming a base for the expansion of the Rainbow Club and the more than 1,200 children for whom they provide a weekly service in Mahon. We left that site that day confident that things would progress but as we have learned up to now, things have moved very slowly.

The exchange of sites and buildings is a slow process. I genuinely understand that due diligence has to be done, engineers' reports have to be done, solicitors need to be involved in the exchange of deeds or whatever may be the case and while I am aware that the HSE has a statutory obligation in respect of how it disposes of property, three years seems excessive. That is what has driven me to lodge this question this evening. I lodged various parliamentary questions in the past few weeks as well.

As I said, this transfer of property will happen at some stage. It has already been ratified by Cork city councillors and it is imminent. Cork City Council will have to conduct some type of public consultation and put the property out for various stakeholders to express their interest in it but what I am asking here is whether we are any closer to the successful resolution of the transfer of that property from HSE estates to Cork City Council.

I thank the Deputy for giving me this opportunity, and the Minister, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, for giving me the opportunity to take his question the response to which he has prepared, as it falls under the Department of Health. Out of respect to the Minister, I will read the response he has given me and then I will add my own commentary.

I thank the Deputy for giving me the opportunity to update the House on the release of the HSE property in Mahon from the National Ambulance Service to Cork City Council. The HSE has a significant property portfolio extending to 4,400 buildings across 2,600 locations throughout the country. These buildings range in age from pre-18th century to modern purpose-built facilities. The health estate is varied and complex, ranging from small health centres in rural locations to very large acute hospitals. The HSE actively manages this constantly changing portfolio, including the disposal of identified surplus assets.

The HSE adheres to its statutory obligations and follows the process for the disposal of properties by State bodies and agencies. When a HSE property has been vacated by a service, it is necessary to establish if it is surplus to requirements and decide to retain the property in the healthcare estates. If the property is to be disposed of, the process hierarchy is set out as follows: offer the property to the LDA via written notification; should the LDA not choose to take up the property, under DPER Circulars 11/2015 and 17/2016, the HSE must then offer the property to other stakeholders via the State property register; and should no other State stakeholders take up the property, the HSE places the property for sale on the open market.

Should a local authority identify HSE property which it believes could be repurposed for community use, the local authority should contact the HSE in the first instance to determine if the property is vacant and surplus to health care needs. Eighteen months ago, HSE agreed to transfer a building in Mahon to Cork City Council. The council would then put it out for expressions of interest, with the view that it could be suitable to house the Rainbow Club autism charity. The HSE property in question was leased to the National Ambulance Service in 2021 to use as a Covid swabbing centre. The Deputy will be aware of the vital role the National Ambulance Service played during the pandemic.

Following discontinuation of the Covid swabbing operation, the building has been utilised as a National Ambulance Service regional training facility for in-house staff training. It has also, more recently, been used as a base for a community engagement unit who carry out work with groups in relation to the first responder scheme. The transfer of the building was delayed due to the difficulty of sourcing an alternative building for the National Ambulance Service. The Department of Health has been advised that the National Ambulance Service vacated the property over the weekend and returned the keys to HSE capital and estates on Monday, 10 June. HSE capital and estates has assessed the building and is currently carrying out minor remedial works before completing a formal surrender to Cork City Council which is anticipated to take place by the end of this week, this being 14 June 2024. The local HSE capital and estates office is actively engaged with Cork City Council property division regarding same.

That is the formal response that we have. Eighteen months on, we now have the keys and the title passing to Cork City Council. No doubt officials within Cork City Council will act with speed to ensure the project that the Deputy and I have talked about for the past three years will pass on to a community group that provides serious needs supporting 1,200 children on a weekly basis in the Mahon area and wider Cork area and that has an SLA with the HSE.

That is great. The Minister of State has provided me an answer tonight that, as she said, by the end of this week it will be formally done. After those many years, that is most welcome. I know that people listening in this evening will be delighted to hear that.

As I said, the response is most welcome. Now that the Minister of State has delivered the news, I would like to see Cork City Council, as she referenced in her response, proceed as expeditiously as possible to get that public consultation under way. There will be a public consultation process, which is understandable.

I will set out the case for the Rainbow Club, as that is why we initially visited that site, as outlined by the Minister of State. It is an organisation she and I hold in high esteem and have visited on a number of occasions. The Rainbow Club's ability to attract staff in the current climate is particularly admirable. It is something we could all learn from in terms of service provision and provision of therapies. Its ability to recruit and provide those services and therapies would put others to shame. I know the Minister of State is also committed to reversing the trend and is pushing for the reintroduction of therapists into special schools. That would also be most welcome but, in the interim, a facility such as the Rainbow Club could provide genuine expansion of service provision in the wider Cork area. As she said, it is not just people from the Cork city area who use the Rainbow Club. I know people who are travelling from counties Kerry and Tipperary at least once or twice a week to avail of its services. Its reach is far and wide.

I reiterate my gratitude to the Minister of State and the Minister, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, in addition to an Tánaiste, who has been involved in this project for an awfully long time, and the Minister, Deputy Michael McGrath, as the building and the facility is in their constituency, although its reach extends much more broadly than that. I ask the Minister of State to maintain the interest she has had in this facility up to now. I know she will get us to a point where we will see that building being refurbished and, most importantly, used. As I said, the most important thing is that will now possibly provide a future for the Rainbow Club or whatever other organisation will go into that building. I again thank the Minister of State for her response.

This is a project that if the likes of it were in Dundalk or Drogheda, whereby a property was made available to the local authority, I have no doubt the Cathaoirleach Gníomhnach would stay hot on my heels until it was operationalised. It is one of those project that needs to be operationalised now. There is no point in having a building left vacant. It is now a building that will pass over to Cork City Council. There are very good people working in Cork City Council who need to prioritise this because, at the end of the day, Jon, Karen and her entire team, who are amazing, are working out of the hall at Mahon. The wonderful hall committee at Mahon has allowed that, but every day the team puts out the gear to do occupational therapy and training and have to put it away again every evening. All the kids are in Portakabins. There is a beautiful building with a park behind it. The land that comes with it is a natural environment, especially for the older children who are transitioning. It is the most sensory-based space one could imagine and there is ample parking. Children would have the opportunity to be within nature. We always talk about sensory gardens and sensory needs. This is the perfect site for that.

I will commit to funding. This is my own funding and, as I said previously, if this building could pass over there would be funding to make it happen from a capital perspective. I will absolutely honour my agreement on that but I need Cork City Council to act expeditiously so that the HSE can come on board. The HSE has been wonderful in working with the Rainbow Club, shown by the fact there is a service level agreement supporting 1,200 children on a weekly basis. We recognise that if it were not for the Rainbow Club, services would be very depleted in Cork.