Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Dail Éireann — 2026-03-25
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Cian O'Callaghan (SD), Dublin Bay North

I welcome the northside home care workers in the Public Gallery today. They do incredible work in the local community looking after sick and elderly people and they must be paid a decent and fair wage.
Parents and carers from Before We Die visited the Dáil recently to highlight the housing needs of adults with intellectual disabilities. The name of their campaign group sums up the grim reality of what they are fighting for. They are loving parents who want to be sure their daughters and son will be cared for after they are gone. This should not be too much to ask for in a country where the Government has billions at its disposal. They need more than sympathetic words; they need action to be taken, funding ring-fenced and plans put in place.
These are the words of a parent who contacted Newstalk recently:
We're an elderly couple, both struggling significantly with health issues. We've been told by a very good day service that there are simply no places ... We will, sadly, die sooner rather than later because we get zero respite and never get a chance to recoup our energy. We've been told [our son] could be put anywhere in the country.
This parent is not alone. Parents have no idea what will happen to their son or daughter after they die. They have no plan because there are no options - no gradual transition, no certainty about where they will be housed and nobody left to advocate for their son's or daughter's well-being.
Only after parents die, when there is an emergency situation, will the State finally step in. A vulnerable person is then put up for tender to private contractors. What sort of a care system is this? What sort of a country treats its citizens like this? An bhfuil aon rud á dhéanamh ag an Taoiseach chun é seo a shocrú? What will the Taoiseach do to fix this?
When I raised this with the Tánaiste in February, he admitted there had not been enough progress. "Not enough progress" is a monumental understatement. The disability capacity review in 2021 identified the need for an additional 3,900 residential places just to catch up with pre-recession levels. Four years later, we still have thousands of families where elderly parents are working as full-time carers in their 70s, 80s and even 90s - four years of record budgets and little to show for it. When a parent dies, an adult with an intellectual disability is left stranded. They will lose their mum or dad, their carer, their advocate, their home and their community, all at the same time.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-03-25/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:47+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-25