Disability Issues
Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-26
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Emer Higgins (FG), Dublin Mid-West

I would like to thank Senator Boyhan for raising this important issue and for giving me the opportunity to respond on behalf of the both the Minister, Deputy Foley, and me. We are both in the Department of Children, Disability and Equality.
As the Senator mentioned, the national housing strategy for disabled people provides the framework for the delivery of housing for people with all levels of disability. While the housing response itself falls within the remit of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, as the Senator has said, the Department of Children, Disability and Equality funds the provision of supports for community living, as well as supports for more complex specialist disability residential services, with the services provided either directly by the HSE or on behalf of the HSE by service providers.
The overall budget increase from €1.7 billion at the close of 2017 to close to €3.9 billion this year for specialist disability services reflects the programme for Government commitment to improving the lives of people with disabilities, signalling to those with a disability that this Government is committed to making a difference in their lives.
Specialist disability services that people with disabilities may need to live in local authority homes include disability residential services, personal assistance and home support. That is where the dovetailing the Senator spoke about comes in. In 2026, €65 million has been allocated to disability residential services for new developments, which includes €40 million that will provide in the region of 199 residential responses, and will also cover the 152 new residential placements. The remaining €25 million will support in the region of 40 residential packages for children in care with complex needs, the enhancement of existing residential placements, decongregation transitions, which the Senator mentioned, and the under 65s programme.
Other key supports that people with disabilities may need to live in local authority homes include home support and personal assistance services. The budget this year also provided €5 million to support the delivery of over 100,000 additional home support and 50,000 additional personal assistance hours, enabling approximately 7,000 people to receive disability home support services and almost 3,000 adults to receive personal assistance to maintain their independence.
As the Senator mentioned, the Ministers, Deputies Foley and Browne, along with their officials, have made significant progress, through the implementation structures established under the national housing strategy for disabled people, in improving co-ordination with the local authorities and disability service providers at local, regional and national level. This includes establishing the levels of unmet need for specialist disability residential services in each county or local authority area. This will inform the setting of targets in the local authority housing development action plans for two cohorts of disabled people, namely those living more independently in the community, and those with greater support needs, who will receive specialist disability residential services.
As the Senator said, if we do not have targets in place, it will be hard to motivate people to reach them. It is also very hard to measure the progress. I am a big believer in them and welcome them.
The Senator might also be interested to know that the HSE has established new housing co-ordinator roles and new residential planning and review teams. These are currently being hired for and will be in place this year to co-ordinate and oversee the delivery and planning of new residential placements and future placements, many of which will be delivered by local authority homes. At present, this is very much a crisis response, and we are very aware that we want to move towards a more sustained, planned response.
The Senator mentioned disabled people and work in his comments. I visited a service yesterday in Celbridge called Dara, which has a fantastic work-ready programme. Unfortunately, the level of disabled people in our workforce is currently at only 17%, but Dara has translated that 17% to 74% in its service.
There are very positive things happening around the country, and it is important we also shine a light on those.

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Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-05-26/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:59+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-26