There is a brutal truth at the heart of our disability system. Families have been forced to say it out loud because the Government is not listening. The reality is the State is waiting for parents to die. Parents in their 70s, 80 and 90s must continue to act as full-time carers for sons or daughters with intellectual disabilities. Regardless of their age, health and ability to care for another adult, if they are still alive, the State looks the other way.

The system for housing adults with intellectual disabilities is both nonsensical and unusually cruel. When a parent passes away, only then will an emergency placement be found for their son or daughter. That placement is too often hundreds of miles away from their home. Within the space of a few weeks, a vulnerable person will lose their parent, their carer, their home, their friends, their community and any semblance of the life they once knew. No civilised society should treat its citizens like this.

There are more than 600 adults with intellectual disabilities in residential placements outside of their home county. Almost 200 are in placements that are over 100 km from their homes. There are people from Cork in Kildare, people from Waterford in Dublin and people from Kildare in Tipperary. Hundreds of vulnerable people are being ripped from their communities at the most difficult time of their lives. The Minister, Deputy Foley, recently announced that local authorities will be required to set disability housing targets, but people cannot live in targets and families cannot wait for to see if these homes will ever materialise.

The State's growing reliance on private operators is a symptom of a deeper disfunction. The Muiríosa Foundation, a progressive section 38 provider, recently told the Joint Committee on Disability Matters that it is forced to rely on the private rental market. This means that it invests tens of thousands of euro to meet HIQA standards, only to face eviction if a landlord decides to sell. At the same time, commercial companies funded by the Government can buy up properties far from a resident's home and community. This privatisation of care is of serious concern to parents. They do not want their sons or daughters outsourced for profit; they want them to be housed and cared for in their communities.

Adults with intellectual disabilities deserve to live with dignity, security and independence. Targets alone are not enough. The Before We Die campaign wants a disability housing plan that includes delivery timelines, clear reporting and multi-annual ring-fenced funding. Will the Tánaiste finally listen to these parents? Will he meet them? They have asked to meet with him but he has not arranged to meet with them yet. Will the Government introduce the ring-fenced funding that is clearly needed to provide homes for adults with intellectual disabilities?

I thank the Deputy for raising this important issue. It is good to see his colleague Deputy Ennis settling in well beside him. I think I have been in touch to arrange to meet them. I will be meeting them in June. The Taoiseach has also met them, as have the Minister, Deputy Foley, and the Minister of State, Deputy Higgins. When I say "them", I mean the Before We Die group. I thank them for their work and advocacy and for shining a spotlight on this situation.

Sometimes you just have to stand up in this House and admit that where we are is not where we need to be. This is one of those occasions. I have a load of figures here and can tell the Deputy that we are going to do more residential placements this year, which we are. I can tell him we have increased the disability budget, and we have. None of that takes away from the point he has made, which is valid, accurate and reflects the lived experience of far too many people in this country.

We had a good meeting of the Cabinet committee on disability a couple of weeks ago in respect of housing specifically. This was motivated by the campaign of the Before We Die group. At that meeting, a number of things were agreed. I acknowledge the role the Ministers, Deputies Browne and Foley, and the Minister of State, Deputy Higgins, will play in respect of this matter. We need everybody to pull together on it. A number of principles were set out in the context of shifting away from a crisis response to commissioning specialist residential places and towards a planned approach. The Deputy is right. There are far too many emergency situations whereby if the State had planned earlier and better, would not have needed to arise. Second, we need a rebalancing towards more placements with non-profit providers and social housing and away from privately funded housing.

The Deputy's point is right. If it is a criticism, it is right. We are using quite a lot of private for-profit providers. It is better to use them than not to have any option available, but the direction of travel is to ensure that local authorities, as the housing authorities in communities, are stepping up to provide housing for persons with disabilities in the same way they would when it comes to broader social housing. We can and should be doing more to support non-profit providers to build homes. This used to happen. I can think of where in my community there is a small housing estate with a relatively small number of homes and specialist staff in place, and it works.

The points the Deputy makes are valid. We will need a plan. I take the point about targets. We want to house people, but at the same time we need targets. The Deputy stated that there needs to be specificity around them in the context of funding and timelines. That is a fair point. Whatever is the best way to do this, whether it is at an Oireachtas committee or in this House, I am happy to have debate on how we get this right. This group is putting it up to us as a country to do better, and we simply have to.

I welcome that the Tánaiste is being frank about how appalling the situation is and is acknowledging that it has to change and is not acceptable. If the Government is serious about not-for-profit providers being able to play a better role, it must provide ring-fenced multi-annual funding in order that they can plan for services.

I will provide an example. Before the Tánaiste's party took office, St. Michael's House had five respite homes in 2008. It now has just one. There is a six-year waiting list for adults with intellectual disabilities to access respite. As parents are getting older and becoming exhausted, they cannot even access respite for their loved ones. That is an appalling situation. Is the Government going to address that? There is no need for this to be happening. The HSE has been aware of the needs of adults with an intellectual disabilities for years. It does not need to wait for crisis situations to occur. This could be fixed and it needs to be fixed. Targets are one thing ,but we need clear timelines and ring-fenced multi-annual funding. Will the Tánaiste commit to that? When are we going to get information about that?

I am going to commit to meeting the group in June. I am happy to engage further with the Deputy on this matter after that. This is an interesting area in respect of which extra funding is 100% required but where monitoring the impact of that funding on the systems in place also matters. For example, we are increasing respite funding by €25 million this year. We are also increasing funding for home support and personal assistance hours this year. I can say that, and it is true, but then there are demographic and planning issues and the issue of how the money is deployed. If it is deployed in an emergency capacity, it ends up having less impact because it costs more than in a planned capacity, which, I think, at a high level, is the point the group is making.

We need a housing plan when it comes to people with disabilities. It will need to have targets and specific timelines and the Government will need to fund it, but I want a better shared understanding of what the direction of travel looks like. Not every person with a disability is the same, and no one is suggesting they are. Some might be able to continue to live in the community and the family home, some might need a specialist residential service and some might need local authority housing. For some individuals, none of these options might work at all. A plan that tries to address that breadth is important. We should facilitate detailed engagement in this House on that.