I welcome the northside home care workers in the Public Gallery today. They do incredible work in the local community looking after sick and elderly people and they must be paid a decent and fair wage.

Parents and carers from Before We Die visited the Dáil recently to highlight the housing needs of adults with intellectual disabilities. The name of their campaign group sums up the grim reality of what they are fighting for. They are loving parents who want to be sure their daughters and son will be cared for after they are gone. This should not be too much to ask for in a country where the Government has billions at its disposal. They need more than sympathetic words; they need action to be taken, funding ring-fenced and plans put in place.

These are the words of a parent who contacted Newstalk recently:

We're an elderly couple, both struggling significantly with health issues. We've been told by a very good day service that there are simply no places ... We will, sadly, die sooner rather than later because we get zero respite and never get a chance to recoup our energy. We've been told [our son] could be put anywhere in the country.

This parent is not alone. Parents have no idea what will happen to their son or daughter after they die. They have no plan because there are no options - no gradual transition, no certainty about where they will be housed and nobody left to advocate for their son's or daughter's well-being.

Only after parents die, when there is an emergency situation, will the State finally step in. A vulnerable person is then put up for tender to private contractors. What sort of a care system is this? What sort of a country treats its citizens like this? An bhfuil aon rud á dhéanamh ag an Taoiseach chun é seo a shocrú? What will the Taoiseach do to fix this?

When I raised this with the Tánaiste in February, he admitted there had not been enough progress. "Not enough progress" is a monumental understatement. The disability capacity review in 2021 identified the need for an additional 3,900 residential places just to catch up with pre-recession levels. Four years later, we still have thousands of families where elderly parents are working as full-time carers in their 70s, 80s and even 90s - four years of record budgets and little to show for it. When a parent dies, an adult with an intellectual disability is left stranded. They will lose their mum or dad, their carer, their advocate, their home and their community, all at the same time.

The Taoiseach to respond.

This is incredibly traumatic and distressing.

Time is up, Deputy. The Taoiseach to respond.

This is cruel. There needs to be ring-fenced funding in next year's budget to build enough new residential places for adults with intellectual disabilities.

Deputy O'Callaghan, your time is up.

Taoiseach, will you commit to doing this?

It is unacceptable to be that length over time.

I thank the Deputy for raising a very important issue. I met with the Before We Die campaign well over a month ago in Cork and listened intently to what they had to say about their personal situations. Their personal situations could be amplified with many more. There are 1,389 active applications for residential services, with 281 assessed as priority 1. We are investing and there are investment plans in the current budget, with an extra 20% to create additional places in new residential developments and so forth. I have put it on the agenda of the next Cabinet subcommittee on disability because it involves more than just the allocation of funding, though we will have to allocate funding.

How this has evolved is unacceptable. The focus is on emergency solutions all the time. Many elderly parents are very distressed and anxious, understandably so, about what will happen to their loved ones if they pass from this life.

There needs to be proper co-ordination between section 39 providers, local authorities, the State, the Government and the Departments of disability and health. The Minister of State, Deputy Higgins, and the HSE met with the group last week. The Minister, Deputy Foley, also met with the group. What is happening at the moment is there is a siloed approach to understanding the overall housing needs of adults with intellectual disability. It is not just about what we might traditionally call residential places; there must be a much more holistic approach. In some instances, people are being sent to local authorities to apply for housing in the ordinary way. That is not good enough.

With any application for housing from someone with an intellectual disability, there is a continuum. Some will need some levels of support and others will need greater levels of support. It cannot be a siloed approach saying it is a local authority problem or challenge. It is not. It has to be one where the care aspects are integrated with the housing solution. That is where I want to take this. It will take a bit of reorganisation in terms of how Government operates, as well as local government, section 39 providers and everybody involved here. The priority has to be on those waiting. Over the last number of years, there has been a huge investment in decongregation, which has taken up lot of resources. We need to work through the prioritisation of those in need.

Thank you, Taoiseach. You will come back in. I call Deputy O'Callaghan.

In my view, those most in need are those without housing and whose parents are getting older.

I welcome the fact the Taoiseach recognises this needs to be addressed. Losing your mum or dad, your carer, your advocate, your home and your community at the same time is incredibly traumatic.

For people then potentially to be offered a place hundreds of miles away from where they have lived all their life and everything they have ever known is deeply inhumane. That cannot continue and the Taoiseach must act on it. Will he commit sufficient funding that is ring-fenced to address this? I welcome the other approaches that are being taken but funding must be ring-fenced to address this issue. Will he commit to that?

Certainly, as I said, this is an issue I am going to deal with personally, as Taoiseach, with the Minister, Deputy Foley, the Minister of State, Deputy Higgins, and others, including the Minister for Health. It needs an integrated response, without question. We certainly will provide the necessary funding but, again, we have to get the design and the structures right. In my view, there is funding available within housing in a lot of instances but it cannot be that we just pass it over to the local authority to deal with. It is not a sustainable or proper response to say it is somebody else's problem.

There have been capacity issues within section 39 bodies in terms of dealing with this housing and residential issue. We need to engage with the different authorities and bodies responsible and get moving on it. We must engage proactively with local authorities to say we want particular cases dealt with and particular priorities set. That needs to be done in a proactive way as opposed to dealing with an issue when it becomes an emergency.

Thank you, Taoiseach. Further engagement is certainly required.

The HSE has to be involved in that process as well.