Some €50 million from a Department of Health "contingency fund" is to be released immediately to help improve services for people with disabilities, it was announced yesterday.
The money will be spent on providing 175 new emergency residential places and over 600 additional day places for persons with disabilities across the State and on the up-grading of existing facilities.
Some €20 million will be spent on extra places and €30 million on improving facilities. The extra day places will be available for school-leavers and adults by September.
Announcing the funding, the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, said it had come from "within the existing health envelope" but had not been earmarked for any other project at the beginning of the year. It was part of a contingency fund, he said.
"By good husbandry this year, I've managed to prioritise disability," he said.
Asked if the Special Olympics had an impact on his decision to prioritise disabilities, Mr Martin said if he had announced the allocation before the Games "the cynics would have been in full flight".
He said he had taken on board the criticisms of disability groups this year. They had complained that it was the first time in more than a decade that there had been no money allocated for additional services.
Mr Tim O'Malley, Minister for State with responsibility for persons with disabilities, said the funding was being allocated now "because it was the right thing to do". Figures in the latest disability database indicated there were 2,000 people without services who would require them by 2006 at the latest, he added.
The additional funding was broadly welcomed. Ms Deirdre Carroll of the National Association for the Mentally Handicapped in Ireland said it was obvious that protests at the Mansion House and outside the Dáil by persons with disabilities had paid off. She said she hoped the money would help people such as a 17-year-old girl with a learning disability who was being accommodated in a psychiatric hospital because there was no appropriate place for her.
"It would have been wiser if that money had been put in place at the beginning of the year. I think there would have been a lot less anxiety for parents," she said.
Nonetheless, it was still welcome, she said, and she hoped it would be repeated in next year's Budget.
The director of the Forum of People with Disabilities, Ms Mary Keogh, said she hoped all future funding would recognise the right of disabled people to services with standards.
The Irish Wheelchair Association's director of services, Ms Anne Winslow, said she was not yet aware whether her organisation would benefit from the funding. The organisation protested outside the Dáil in January over fears that the jobs of 200 of its members' helpers employed under FÁS schemes would be axed. She said the IWA had recently been assured by FÁS that these jobs would not now have to be cut.
Fine Gael's spokesman on disability issues, Mr David Stanton, called on Mr Martin to explain why he has waited until "the 11th hour" and put people with disabilities and their families "through hell" before making the funding available.
"It still remains to be seen whether funding made available in such a haphazard manner will be spent properly and whether it is adequate to meet the needs," he added.
Labour's spokeswoman on equality and law reform, Ms Breeda Moynihan Cronin, said it was clear the €50 million allocation was a reflection of the pressure exerted by parents and by the Opposition. "This allocation must not be once-off. A fully funded plan is needed over a two- to three-year period," she said.