Disability Services
Dail Éireann — 2026-04-23
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Emer Higgins (FG), Dublin Mid-West

I respond by meeting them and listening to them. I have met with the Before We Die campaign twice now and the Minister, Deputy Foley, has too. The first time was at their request and I was absolutely happy to do that. The second time was at my request because I wanted to meet them, together with the HSE, to ensure that we had the right people around the table to be able to make progress. I would also like to take this opportunity to mention a group who are not part of that campaign but who are facing similar situations, Remember Us. I met with a group of parents and adults with intellectual disabilities last month and I met with a young advocate and his parents yesterday. I have another meeting with two parents later today.
This budget, for the first time every, provides for planned residential placements so that we are not always operating on a crisis management basis but are funding beds for the future. That is the situation we want to get to. That is why this year we are investing in that and expect that to be a success. We expect to be able to bring those places on board and to fill those positions and we want to grow on that next year. We are capacity building through our service providers and through the capital plan that I mentioned earlier. We are also investing in better collaboration between the HSE and the Department of housing because local authorities have a role to play here also in terms of providing and building houses and homes that can become respite and residential day care services. We have six positions within the HSE, four of which are now filled, dedicated solely to that collaboration to bring more buildings on stream to provide for those children and young adults with disabilities.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-04-23/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:48+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-23