4. Deputy Liam Quaide asked the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality if she has completed an equality and human rights impact assessment of her Department's practice of locating people with intellectual and other disabilities in excess of 100 km from home in residential services for prolonged periods of time, and of her Department's failure to maintain statistics on these distances given their clear breach of the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [72512/25]

Sentiment score: 0.13

Has the Minister undertaken an equality and human rights impact assessment of the Department's practice of locating people with intellectual and similar disabilities in excess of 100 km from their home in residential services for prolonged periods of time? Will she comment on her Department's failure to maintain even broad-brush statistics on these distances given their clear breach of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD, which enshrines the right of community living for people with a disability?

Sentiment score: 0.17

I thank the Minister of State for her response. It is very concerning to hear of the rapidly increasing investment by her Department in privately outsourced residential services for people with disabilities. In many cases a person will move into such a service in the context of a crisis. The HSE will be under pressure to find any place for the person. The residential service they are offered will quite likely be located extremely far from home and sometimes in quite an isolated setting that is not joined up to community or other supports that would allow a person to grow towards increasing independence, connection and integration. We have a scenario where very wealthy private companies are amassing large sums of money with which they are building up significant property portfolios while section 38 and 39 services are struggling to keep the lights on and sometimes paying rent on properties. This is a disjointed, costly and reactive way to provide these services. When will the Government devise a national disability service plan that is implemented through multiannual funding and when will it move away from private outsourcing, which comes with such a human cost to the person with a disability as well as such a financial cost to the State?

Sentiment score: -0.04

I thank the Minister of State. The Minister said in a recent budget Estimate session that she wants to move away from private outsourcing but the proportion of money the Department is spending on these services has nearly doubled over the past four years. While the Minister is saying one thing, her Department's actions are the opposite. I can understand the ongoing reliance on these providers but this will not change as long as the Department is devoid of a plan for residential, vocational and community support services that are integrated with each other in each community. We need a service plan for disability akin to A Vision for Change. That document had key staffing targets per mental health service and per head of population. We have a very haphazard pattern of disability services in different areas based, essentially, on a tradition of the service being in that territory. When is the Department going to provide data - even general data - on the distance between a disabled person's house and their community of origin? This is a human rights issue and data on it should be recorded.

Sentiment score: 0.13