HSE accused of diverting disability funding

The HSE has been accused of diverting a total of €83 million allocated for the disability sector to fund hospital over-runs and other services.

The Disability Federation of Ireland (DFI) says it is demanding the return of the funds, which it claims have been diverted to other sectors since January 2007.

Delivering his pre-Budget submission today, DFI chief executive John Dolan described the HSE's behaviour as "unacceptable".

"We have no intention of continuing to be a banker of last resort to the HSE because it cannont live within its allocation," he said.

"We are calling on the HSE to do the decent thing and return the funding to where it was allocated, we are calling on the Minister for Health to ensure that happens and lastly we are calling on Government to act as a guarantor that this funding will be returned and that the HSE can never again misdirect funding."

Mr Dolan noted the Government had taken strong action to give confidence in the banking sector by undertaking to act as guarantor.

He called on Government to guarantee that disabled people would receive the funding they needed. He warned that the Government would face a "major credibility issue" if it could not enforce the delivery of funding allocated for a specific purpose through a State agency.

Mr Dolan said that Government had allocated an extra €95 million to disability and mental health in 2007, "and the HSE simply helped themselves to €53 million of it".

He claimed that €30 million of the €50 million committed this year had been rediverted to date.

Mr Dolan said he was increasingly concerned that the specifics of the National Disability Strategy were being ignored.

The DFI's pre-Budget submission calls on the Government to commit €50 million to develop disability services in addition to multi-annual funding for 2009 and €5 million to fund capacity building among voluntary disability organisations.

It says the Government must introduce a cost-of-disability payment, which should not act as a disincentive to employment, and address core funding deficits in voluntary disability organisations.