2026-04-23

131. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality if she is considering additional funding for disability organisations, particularly those in the voluntary sector, to help them cope with increasing costs of operations; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [29004/26]

Many organisations that deal with disability and vulnerable sectors of our society are voluntary organisations. That is in itself a problem, but I will set that aside and ask about proper funding for those organisations to be able to look after the most vulnerable in our society. The Before We Die campaign was in the Houses yesterday to highlight the lack of funding to deal with the need for proper housing and residential care for older people with intellectual disabilities when their parents die, get sick and so on. It is an example of the need for extra funding for these organisations to be able to do their jobs properly.

The Government acknowledges the essential role voluntary organisations have in delivering a range of disability services. The Department has provided substantial additional funding to HSE specialist disability services since the transfer of functions in 2023. In this year's budget, €3.9 billion is provided for. In budget 2025, it amounted to €3.2 billion, so there was quite a substantial increase of almost 20% in that one year alone. These substantial additional investments demonstrate the Government’s commitment to supporting disability services, along with the provision of significant year-on-year Supplementary Estimates. Through the annual budgetary process, the Department has helped the disability sector to meet the increased costs associated with existing service provision while also incrementally expanding service provision to meet demand. Every year, the Estimates process allows the HSE to request funding for the full cost of service provision, including cost increases experienced during that year. In this year's budget, the Department provided €3.9 billion for HSE specialist disability services. As I said, that was a substantial increase of €628 million, or almost 20% above 2025, the largest ever increase in funding for disability services. It also follows significant year-on-year funding increases in recent years. In fact, there has been an overall increase of €1.85 billion, or 91%, since 2020. The additional funding sought for this year includes a significant uplift to the existing level of service provision of €478 million to address sectoral funding pressures such as the increased cost of service provision, pay cost pressures, capacity limitations and service provider sustainability. In addition to that €478 million for the uplift to the existing level of provision, a sum of €150 million has been provided to fund service expansion in residential and respite services, day service provision, home support, personal assistance and children’s services. The Department is also providing €43 million in disability capital funding for this year, a significant increase of €16 million on last year's provision.

To be honest, bandying around figures will mean very little to those who are concerned about their loved ones being let down. The Before We Die campaign's characterisation of the situation facing parents of children with intellectual disabilities was pretty grim. A lot of it revolved around the lack of planning and related funding for voluntary organisations. The description was fairly stark. They talked about a systemic failure in the State's provision of housing and care for adults with intellectual disabilities and about overreliance on emergency placements, where parents were living in a perpetual state of near or actual crisis. They said that the system was broken and that families were terrified that their loved ones would be placed in cost-effective, for-profit settings. They argued that their sons and daughters had a right to be heard, to be planned for and to be housed. Centrally, they said this means funded plans for children with intellectual disabilities when their parents pass on and proper, ring-fenced funding for section 38 and section 39 organisations. How does the Minister of State respond to campaigns like Before We Die and the concerns they are raising?

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.

That sounds good and I hope it is the case but if we look at the additional funding in the last budget, it was an extra €40 million. That amounts to about 80 to 100 new homes but there are more than 2,000 adults with intellectual disabilities living with parents over the age of 70. Around 500 of those are with parents who are over the age of 80. They characterise the situation as one where basically, unless somebody dies or gets severely ill, there is no help available. It is a crisis management situation and the allocation of funding to the relevant organisations is way short of what is necessary. I reiterate the point about section 38 and section 39 organisations that it does not help that we have a second-class tier of people working in the health and care services who are on lesser pay and conditions than the people working directly for the HSE. The lack of funding, the lack of proper payment for staff in this area and the lack of planned funding and so on is leading to a crisis management situation for very vulnerable people and their parents.

On the Deputy's last point, the WRC pay agreement reached in 2025 between Government Departments and unions includes funding for a phased 9.25% pay increase that will benefit workers in section 39 voluntary organisations. The agreement also includes an automatic linkage to future public sector pay agreements for those workers to match all future pay increases. In delivering on the 9.25% pay increase, the Government is improving the ability of service providers to actively recruit and retain staff and supporting the overall sustainability of the sector. The Taoiseach has convened a meeting of the Cabinet committee on disability for Monday. That meeting will be attended by me and the Minister, Deputy Foley, and our officials, as well as the Minister for housing and officials from his Department. We will discuss future planning when it comes to the buildings we need to increase capacity to deliver more residential and respite care across Ireland.