I wish to start off by registering my concern at the closure of beds in Killarney Community Hospital. Its capacity has gone from 38 beds to 23 beds, a loss of 15 beds. Bed numbers at St. Columbanus public nursing home have dropped from 92 to 65, a loss of 27 beds, including bed losses on the Fuschia ward which caters for patients with dementia. These are savage cuts. A total of 42 beds have been taken out of these hospitals in Killarney and I wish to register my concern about that. What is the Government's plan in respect of people who get sick in the Killarney area? Is it telling them not to get sick? Is it telling people who are getting old and must go into a public nursing home not to get old? The Government stated it would increase bed capacity around the country but it is closing beds in Killarney. What is it going to do about this issue? How is it going to cater for people who get sick?

I wish to highlight on behalf of parents and families of adult children with intellectual disabilities that they have been badly let down since the start of the virus pandemic. Very few daycare centre services are open. Some of them open for two or three hours on one day per week, but that is not good enough. A woman named Mary who lives in County Kerry has a 20-year-old son named Conor. He is a big strong boy who needs routine and was doing very well in the service he was attending but it has closed. She works in the public sector. Her husband, who works for himself, has hardly worked since March because he has been minding his intellectually impaired son. They have three other children but cannot bring them anywhere. The children must make do and get to matches and other events by themselves.

They need financial assistance to hire trained people to help them out. Otherwise, many of these parents will be unable to continue under this pressure. Their mental health is suffering.

It is the same with families who have a partner or husband, mother or father, with dementia. I refer to all the services of the day-care centres that the buses used to bring them to, such as Rockmount in Kilgarvan, four or five days a week. Such centres are all closed. There were wonderful highly trained people running all these places - Rathmore, Scartaglin, Castleisland and Knocknagoshel. The closure of these centres placed savage pressure on husbands and wives and sons and daughters. The Government needs to provide financial assistance for the families.

We need to talk about home help. Old people who wanted to stay in their homes as long as possible are not getting the home help they should get. This is putting more pressure on our hospitals and nursing homes by not providing more home help for them to stay in their homes longer. That could happen if the services were provided for them. I ask the Taoiseach and the Minister for Health to do something about these issues that I am raising.

I thank the Deputy for raising two issues in his leaders' question. The first relates to the closure of beds. I do not know the specific local circumstances of Killarney or, indeed, Columbanus house which the Deputy mentioned. I met with the HSE for the south region on Friday last. They said they were actively looking for additional beds, in terms of community nursing beds and rehabilitation beds, with a view to making sure that there were proper placements and appropriate beds, for example, for patients who had left acute hospitals and who needed convalescence or nursing home beds. It would appear to me that this may be a HIQA reconfiguration where HIQA would say one has to move from the wards to better single-room en suite accommodation. That has been going on for quite some time and has had an impact on certain centres. I do not know whether that applies here or not. What I know is that quite a substantial amount of funding has been provided to enable the HSE in all regions of the country to procure and provide for additional rehabilitation beds and additional beds in nursing homes with a view to making sure that there is a proper flow through our acute hospital system on an ongoing basis from here right through to the middle of next year and beyond. If the Deputy gives me the details of the specific cases, I will pursue them and get replies for him. It is more, not less, beds we need to deal with the impact of Covid-19.

Second, Covid-19 has had an unfortunate negative impact on the provision of services for adults with disabilities, particularly in terms of day-care services. Nonetheless, there has been a programme since August of restoring aspects of those disability services for as many people as possible. For example, 19,000 people with a disability attend the adult day services. I refer to the disability day-service locations which closed in March. Day services reopened at approximately 40% capacity throughout August and early September. The increased funding has been provided already so that the level of service available to people attending adult day services can be increased as well. Additional funding has been provided in the winter initiative to provide for an additional services and additional volume of services, likewise for school-leavers and also intensive support packages to deliver to quite a number of individuals who are in a chronic situation. There is quite a number of people in emergency situations which I am particularly concerned about, as are the services on the ground. We intend to work with the service providers to see can we deal with those emergency situations more effectively than has been the case to date.

In that case, in relation to the families with children with physical or mental disabilities, or both, where the Taoiseach cannot provide the service, could he give them financial help so that they themselves could hire somebody because they cannot continue under the pressure they are experiencing at present?

The district hospital and the Columbanus Home in Killarney are on the same campus. We read that the Government was going to provide more beds but the opposite is happening in Killarney which only has the one community hospital. Where are people who get sick or need a short period of rehabilitation after an operation in Cork or Tralee general hospital supposed to go? There has been a savage cut in Killarney. We are told that HIQA has demanded this. Where was HIQA for the last 20 years, when the same number of people were going? There have already been ward closures in the district hospital in Killarney. To close more now is absolutely scandalous and ridiculous when people are presenting with different things-----

Thank you Deputy.

-----and maybe coronavirus as well. Will the Taoiseach look at it and talk to HIQA? If it was good enough all the time since March, how is it not fit for purpose now all of a sudden?

I am glad the Deputy has clarified that aspect of it. I suspected that it might be a reconfiguration of the hospital because HIQA's guidelines said that what was there was not optimal. I will get a report on it. I met with the HSE South team last week. The need for additional beds outside acute hospitals to provide placements for people is an area of considerable concern to it. I know it is engaging with many providers to get additional capacity. The money is there to get additional capacity and it needs to procure it.

On disability, of the additional €10 million, some €7.5 million will go to disability day services. There will be an extra day a week for over 14,000 adults. The other €2.5 million will go to 210 intensive support packages to enable young adults with complex or high support needs to remain at home and in their communities. The packages are person-centred and tailored to the needs of the individual and their families. It is a resource-intense area, but it is needed. It will help people in their homes. We must continue to build on that.