Éamon Ó Cuív urges swift transfer of community disability services

Minister, what I am looking for is information in relation to the responsibilities of disability that are transferred to the Department and the amount of budget involved and exactly where the dividing line now is between health and disability. Thank you very much Deputy, I am taking this for Minister Rabbit. National Disability Policy transferred to our Department in October 2020 from the Department of Justice and Equality. This includes coordinating two national disability strategies, the National Disability Inclusion Strategy and the Comprehensive Employment Strategy for Persons with Disabilities. Our Department also acts as the focal point and coordination mechanism for the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the UNCRPD. In addition, my Department has responsibility for related legislation which includes the Employment Equality Act, the Equal Status Act, the Disability Act, the Irish Sign Language Act and the Assisted Decision-Making Capacity Act. Many dedicated disability supports are provided across government, for example by the Minister for Health and the Minister for Social Protection and funding secured within my own Department complements the resources given to disability across government. Under Budget 2022, $1.8 million has been assigned to the disability policy team and this will be used for a broad range of projects to support national disability policy and the programs and work streams attached to the functions within my Department. The Deputy may wish to note that responsibility for specialist community-based disability services is due to transfer to my Department from the Department of Health. This is in line with the Taoiseach's announcement on the formation of the Government. The intention is to have the coordination of disability-related issues being led by a Senior Minister for the first time. Progress is being made in relation to the transfer of community-based disability services. Enabling legislation is due to be published very shortly. The heads were agreed by Government just before Christmas. It is a complex transfer and it involves very significant amendments to the Health Act of 2004, establishing government arrangements between the HSE and my Department, and it is transferring a budget of more than $2.3 billion between votes, while at the same time ensuring that there is no negative impact on current services. So until the enabling legislation completes its passes through both Houses in early 2022, responsibility for the community-based disability services remains with the Minister for Health. Minister, thanks. You have given a very comprehensive and clear answer to the question. So what I take from you is that, as of now, the actual services that are delivered on the ground as people are facing them are still delivered by the Department of Health, but that that is due to transfer through this complex legislation. You said earlier this year that in the real world and I long for all the delays and processes in the House here, would you be talking about that being implemented by the autumn? That is the first question. The second one, the assisted decision-making. That has been in gestation for a long, long time and has caused a lot of upset for people. Can you confirm that that will be put through the House expeditiously and that it will be finished once and for all with making people have the right to make their own decisions? Thanks, Deputy. Well, with the help of Deputy Funcheon and her committee, the assisted decision-making act is right now before them for pre-legislative scrutiny and I have no doubt it will get swift scrutiny and then we can bring it through the House. We need that in for June of this year. Myself and Minister Abbott are committed to doing that, so working with the committee we look to do that. In terms of the transfer of function, I would hope it will be transferred far earlier than that. As soon as the legislation has come through the House, it can be implemented. It is not going through PLS. There was an agreement with the Health Committee because it is a transfer of functions piece of legislation. It will not go through a PLS process. Once it is drafted, it will go straight into the House. So that will certainly shorten the time. It is a functional, it is not a policy change, it is just a functional change. So I am hoping that we can be reasonably expeditious moving it through the House. So I would hope by spring, perhaps early summer, that will be completed and transfer of function will be undertaken. Thanks, Deputy. I really welcome that because I have thought for a long time that we wouldn't look at disability as being an illness. But as a community or a group of people who have to be supported, to live their lives fully within society, and can I take it for example now that all of the people with mental disabilities, with intellectual disabilities and so on, that they will transfer over to you and that acute medicine will remain in the hospitals, but that services such as the Brothers of Charities and Nobility West and all these will transfer over to your department and will be able to get the focus that at times they did not get when they were competing with acute medicine. Thanks, Deputy. And look, that integrated approach, that looking at persons with a disability, not through a medical lens but through a kind of a whole of services lens, is exactly what myself and Minister Rabbit are hoping to achieve. Just to say, mental health, responsibility for mental health services won't be transferring over, that CAMHS and the like remains with the Department of Health, but Brothers of Charities, many of the organisations you listed there, responsibilities for them will transfer to my department. Thank you. Thank you.