I welcome Deputy Micheál Martin.

There is a crisis across the disability services sector in providing access to full-time residential care, particularly for adults with disabilities, as well as to respite care, home care and shared services. Parents of both adults and children are exhausted and stressed and have been beaten down by the system and the absence of services. There is a particular problem for children with disabilities who are being cared for by foster parents, as illustrated by the Ombudsman for Children. Clearly, the Government lacks an appreciation of the crisis and its seriousness. There is terrible inertia at the heart of the Government. Service providers are told to make do with inadequate resources.

In the brief time available to me I will focus on the acute nature of the crisis for adults with disabilities and foster parents. I will refer to a number of cases. Peter is 19 years of age and has an intellectual disability and complex needs. Respite care ceased for him at the beginning of 2015. Home support has also ceased and in June there was no indication of any service for him. His parents are at breaking point and worn out. I have read the letters from the professionals. The second case is a young man named John who will finish school in June. He has a 2:1 staff requirement, multiple complex issues, severe autism and can at times be prone to violence. His parents have been told that there is nowhere for him to go when he finishes school. Gerry is 57 years of age. Unfortunately, the family carer who looked after him passed away late last year. He has a severe intellectual disability, but there are no respite services available. I have met the family and it is a devastating, complex case.

The names I have mentioned are not the real names of the individuals concerned. The next one is. Ken Hurley is 49 years old and needs a full-time residential placement. He has an intellectual disability and in the last year developed early onset dementia. He is ready for discharge from Cork University Hospital where he has been for the last two months. The family have been warned that they will have to pay €1,400 per day if he remains in the hospital any longer. His mother is 85 years old and he has lived with her all his life. The HSE states he must go into a nursing home 70 miles away in Limerick.

I can give the Taoiseach more cases. Seán is 23 years of age, has autism and a 2:1 staff requirement. His mother is an incredible person. When she asked the HSE what would happen to him if anything happened to her, she was told not to worry as the HSE would look after him.

The Deputy's time is up.

In other words, if anything happens to the mother, the HSE will look after her son, but while she is there, it will not because it cannot.

I can illustrate more cases, as I am sure other Members also can. It is a crisis. I do not want to hear global figures for what is being spent and so forth-----

Please, Deputy.

Is the Taoiseach aware of the crisis? Does he appreciate that there is a crisis? What is the Government going to do about it?

I thank the Deputy for raising the important issue of disability services. The Government cares for people with disabilities and those who care for them. We have made it a priority in the past couple of years to improve rights and services for people with disabilities. I acknowledge that there is an enormous need and that there are many complex individual cases, with which we struggle. The Deputy deals with them in his work as a public representative, as I do. We do our best to resolve them as quickly as we can, but often they can be difficult to resolve, particularly where there are individual issues and they are very complex. However, we are making a great deal of progress. After many failed attempts by many previous Governments, last year we ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The budget for disability services is now €2 billion. It is a very big budget which was increased by €150 million last year. The Deputy is right that we should not just talk about global figures but also about what they mean in terms of their practical impact for citizens with disabilities and the people who care for them. They mean, for example, that we are able to recruit an additional 100 therapists this year. We anticipate that 20 of the 100 will be in place by April which will allow us to reduce waiting times for services such as assessments of needs, for which people have been waiting a long time. There is additional investment in respite care services. This time last year we approved additional funding for 12 new respite care houses, of which ten are already open and providing respite care for 578 people. That is very important because family carers get the break they need while the people for whom they care are in respite care.

We extended access to the medical card to children with severe disabilities as a right, regardless of their parents' incomes. In the past, when both the Deputy and I were in government, children with severe disabilities had their entitlement to a medical card assessed on their parents' income. That has all changed and now 40,000 children with severe disabilities have the medical card as a right and their parents need not be concerned about earning too much for fear that their child might lose his or her medical card. We have also changed how the disability allowance works to encourage people with disabilities who can work to enter the workforce, allowing them to keep more of the money they earn. That is making a big difference in the number of people with disabilities who are supported to enter the workforce. We have supported carers. In a few weeks time there will be an increase in the carer's allowance. It will fully reverse all of the cutbacks made in the past. The carer's support grant has been fully restored, while last year we extended free general practitioner, GP, care services to those in receipt of carer's allowance and carer's benefit as a right.

I am running out of time, but that is just a sample of the meaningful practical actions that have been taken by the Government in the past couple of years. Yes, there is more to do. There is always more work to be done, but we will get it done.

Again, I will refer to a report. These are not scattered individual cases with which we must all deal. This is systemic, but the Taoiseach does not appear to understand that. This is a systemic problem, particularly in adult intellectual disability services. Parents who are growing old are extremely anxious and scared about what will happen to their sons and daughters and the Taoiseach should not try to bat this away by saying we all have individual cases that we try our best to resolve. These cases have been ongoing for some time and have not been resolved. A report from professionals involved in one of the cases stated the parents were at breaking point by the end of August, completely worn out from caring for their son and that they would not be able to endure a similar situation in the coming summer. Service providers are being told that there is no emergency funding available for home care services this year. That is what people have been told by the HSE. There is a crisis in respite and residential care services.

I am sure the Taoiseach is familiar with Molly's case, the subject of a report from the Ombudsman for Children. It is a damning indictment of the services.

The Deputy must conclude.

There are 471 children with a disability in foster care. A year after the report Molly's foster parents have had their home care funding reduced from €240 to €100. The Taoiseach appears to be unaware of the systemic crisis. That is very worrying for all of the parents who contact us and want something to be done on a multi-annual basis to ensure there will be a multi-annual plan and policy to deal with this crisis once and for all.

I am very aware of these issues, both the global issues affecting thousands of people across the country and the many individual cases. Like the Deputy, I have a constituency clinic and well understand the complexities of many individual cases. There is a story behind each one of them.

There is no complexity. They just do not have the resources they need.

We are making a big difference. For example, consider the people with intellectual disabilities who have to live in congregated settings in institutions. There are 2,200 fewer people living in institutional congregated settings. They have been moved out into homes in the community, which is a big change. We have a multi-annual plan to continue that programme to move as many people as possible out of the old-fashioned institutions into much more appropriate settings in the community. The Deputy has visited many of these community houses and knows how much better they are than the institutional congregated settings.

There will be an extra 39 residential places in 2019 and a further 90 emergency places are being planned.

A total of 39 will take us nowhere.

There is funding in place to provide additional emergency places. The number in receipt of respite care services will increase by 8% this year.