Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Deputy for raising this matter. The Government and the HSE are very much aware of the importance of respite service provision for the families of both children and adults with disabilities and the positive impact it can have on people’s lives. Respite is a key priority area for the HSE for people with disabilities and their families, and there has been significant investment in respite services in recent years. New development funding of €15 million in 2024, specifically for respite, will ensure provision continues to expand significantly across the country. This funding will rise to €25 million in a full year. The HSE’s National Service Plan 2024 commits to increasing occupancy of existing respite capacity, where feasible, and alternative respite provision, including in-home respite support hours and group-based targeted measures such as summer camps and evening provision.

Cork-Kerry community healthcare disability services provides respite services for children and adults residing in Cork and Kerry. To respond specifically to the Deputy's question, the funding has been allocated to CHO 4. That will look after Cork and Kerry. Funding for respite has been specifically allocated for Cork and Kerry. This will ensure that where we have four out of seven nights available, the services will go full tilt to seven out of seven. We are also looking at additional capacity of houses to come on stream, and there are business cases in at the moment awaiting our approval. Some will be as part of shared care, where eight children or young adults could share the same accommodation, increasing that capacity where there is a need. At the same time, we are also looking at bringing other buildings back into operation. I think of Sean Abbott and the Cope Foundation who have buildings available and have business cases on which we await a decision from the HSE to be made.

Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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There is no doubt that we have had challenges with recruiting staff. Funding has been provided. The Deputy has mentioned all the brilliant organisations in his area. When they are working at full tilt in the Cork area, they are providing 10,000 bed nights on an annual basis. That is just Cork alone. He talked about Enable's Lavanagh House. That has not got full capacity yet. It is operating four days out of seven and it is in a position to go to seven out of seven on the provision that it can recruit the staff. To give the parents reassurance we are also looking at adding additional capacity there, not just for children services but also for adult services.

When it comes to respite there is an acute need for higher needs dependencies. With some of the buildings that were procured in the past, when a child accesses the service, it may prevent other children from being in service with them, meaning that a child might only be there on one night. We are looking at doing a two-door model where a child with higher needs will be able to operate in their own apartment, which is part of a house and the other children will be able to operate where there could be three or four in the house.

Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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There is no doubt that respite is not one-size-fits-all. Respite needs to be a suite of measures whether it is after-school, Saturday clubs, sibling clubs or holiday camps as well as the in-home support, the residential part of it, the shared care and the home support. It is a suite of measures. Where families are finding that the in-home support is not actually meeting their needs, that is the dialogue required to move to the next level or the next rung of the ladder, as I call it, of what is available in the suite of options, which would in that case be either the home sharing or the shared-care model before we move to that more residential respite. Once they start on that trajectory, they are actually looking at accessing residential respite somewhere down along the line into a full-time capacity. However, keeping that family unit in place for as long as possible with the shared-care or the home-shared model is a better fit for families because it prevents moving to the residential option too early.