The Cope Foundation runs a residential centre in Carrigbeg, Bandon, that accommodates 13 special needs adults four nights a week but these adults have to return home every Friday evening until Monday evening. In some cases, they are returning home to elderly parents who are finding it very challenging to care for them every weekend. In a growing number of cases, these people have no family to care for them at weekends and they have to go to another Cope Foundation house for the weekend. The simple and very obvious solution is for the house at Carrigbeg to remain open seven days a week for these residents. Mr. Denis Mulcahy, a manager at the Cope Foundation, has said that the HSE needs to sign off on a decision to open the house at Carrigbeg in Bandon on a full-time basis. I urge the Tánaiste to work with the Minister for Health, who is already considering this issue, to speed up the signing-off on this decision to open the centre at Carrigbeg seven days a week.

I appreciate the issue the Deputy raises. I understand the point he makes in terms of the value for residents of the centre being open seven days a week, on a continuous basis, so they would not be disrupted. I will ask the Minister for Health and the Minister of State with responsibility for disabilities to engage with the HSE to resolve this issue, or at least to understand the background to it.