Charity funding of disability services needs total overhaul
FOUR years ago, a confidential HSE briefing warned the thenHealth Minister Simon Harris that the residential disability sector was facing into a systemic breakdown that would leave up to 12,000 vulnerable people at risk.
Thanks to whistleblower Shane Corr, the Irish Mail On Sunday has seen this briefing, which predicts that publicly-funded charities in the sector are carrying unsustainable losses.
Some are ‘technically trading recklessly’, and are in breach of company law.
If deficits in their accounts are not addressed, it concludes, sustainability issues will lead to a reduction in services, or operations being transferred to the HSE, or even liquidation.
The Government derides people of integrity such as Mr Corr, who are willing to stand up and point out the absurdities in the system. Our unique way of funding voluntary disability centres was a result of more impoverished times, when it was acceptable to believe that the nation needed to rely on the charity sector to deliver services that are fundamental rights.
The annual €1.2bn HSE subvention of these charities might indeed have been enough a decade ago. Now, stricter controls – imposed when the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) was granted oversight of the sector – have led to better standards, which is admirable, but also greater expense, which is proving untenable.
As the report says, ‘the increased regulatory burden has led to significant increases in non-pay and capital outlay, which has had the effect of devastating any accumulated reserves that providers may have had access to in the past’.
This issue has now come home to roost. Reliance on the charity sector at a time when economic growth was something we read about in economic textbooks was understandable.
Today, despite the economic ebb and flow of unpredicted factors such as the pandemic and the Ukraine war, Ireland is still in relatively prosperous position. There is no justifiable excuse for an inability to plan the residential disability services competently, and to fund them appropriately.
The fact that it seems to have been the imposition of a new regulatory framework without consequent boosted funding of the required changes is the catalyst for this particular crisis, though not the only one.
This newspaper in particular will not forget that one of the main organisations involved, St John of God, has had a habit of putting on the poor mouth while secretly paying some of its top executives eyewatering salaries that are totally at odds with the charity’s mission. The ball is now in Health Minister Stephen Donnelly’s court.
He has been in office two years, which is plenty of time to plan and implement a radical and total overhaul of the sector before the issues gravely impact those who rely on the services for their quality of life.
FAILURES STACK UP FOR NEXT ELECTION
OUR mid-term analysis of a raft of policy sectors shows that the Government cannot be said to be successful outside of adept handling of the troubled economic challenges visited upon us by external forces affecting every country in the world.
Yes, there is a little done, but a lot more to do. Taoiseach Micheál Martin, and his soon to be successor, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar, should be aware that every failure – in health, housing, education, and beyond – will be accounted for at the ballot box at the next election.