Disability Services
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-17
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Liam Quaide (SD), Cork East

I thank the Minister of State. I find this rationale extraordinary. For years, disabled people and their families have told us that services have developed reactively, after people reach crisis points, if they are developed at all. The HSE has now commissioned what sounds like a substantial analysis drawing together population data, waiting lists, workforce information and the experiences of families, providers and disabled people. Before We Die participated in that research and is now being denied access to it. The response, as I mentioned, from the HSE was that it is not being published but it is not being withheld. That sounds like a phrase straight out of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four . It is completely contradictory. The context here is one of abject political failure, chronic neglect of services and immense suffering as a result, documented over and over again across the disability sector. We need the figures to set that out systematically and begin addressing it. If the report exposes serious gaps, publish it. If the data have limitations, publish these too. Do not commission a major analysis of what disabled people need and then bury the findings. Who in the HSE decided not to publish it? Will the Minister of State intervene in that decision?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-09-17/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:48+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-17