I thank the Minister of State for being here. Like my friends, I commend Deputy Quaide on his sincere work on this over recent months. I also welcome most warmly those who are here in the Gallery who for some warped reason have had to tirelessly work and campaign for so long for what is such a basic entitlement. I am really disappointed because today was not a day for either the Minister of State or the Minister, Deputy Foley, to talk to us about strategies, policies and all the great potential work that is happening. Today was a day to cohesively, all of us together, have a conversation about how poorly people with disabilities are served by the State. Otherwise, we would not have thousands of people fighting. Both speeches have missed the mark on this. That is not a political point I am trying to score. That is me being quite genuine here. There are many great things that are happening. This is not an area where we should be trying to say all is okay because it is not.

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Neither should we be saying that the course that is set out and laid out will meet the needs because it will not. It is as simple as that. I believe today could have been an opportunity for us to come together, but it is actually a day that will empower the Before We Die campaign to work even harder, grow in momentum and somehow find even further resolve and determination. I do not think that it will in any way give people hope of a brighter or more optimistic day because the evidence shows us that the policy has successively failed those living with disabilities. I do not have a lot of time but we really need to emphasise, having worked in disability services and residential settings for so many years, that the ideology of relying on small private institutions is one of the corner-stones of this abject failure, when their sole responsibility is to make profit off those who live in these cold, clinical, isolated settings in the middle of nowhere, in rural communities, where they do not know anybody or anything. Quite often, the staff are agency reliant and they come and go. This is going to have a catastrophic effect. We know it now but I am telling the Minister of State that in years to come, we are going to know it even more. Those organisations we have grown up with that have been the corner-stone of our community are becoming so difficult to run because the funding levels are so low, yet there are these one- or two-unit companies just focused on running a private enterprise. It is not going to work. The Minister of State mentioned those 1,000 beds with regard to the HSE. We have to be sincere. They are not 1,000 HSE settings.

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Is my time up? I apologise.

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