Groups representing parents of people with mental handicap are to form a new alliance to press for improved services. The first steps will be taken at a meeting in Dublin tonight which will be attended by members of parents' groups.
Four parents, including Mr Fergus Finlay, the former Labour Party adviser, will address the meeting at the St Michael's House school in Ballymun.
"This Government had more money to spend this year than before and actually spent less than before on mental handicap," Mr Seamus Greene, chairman of the Parents' Future Planning Group, which organised the meeting, told The Irish Times.
The £7 million extra provided this year for mental handicap services was the lowest allocation of new funds for five years, he said. "My daughter has a day service. I know that when I need a residential service I will not get it and the only way I can get it is to die. It's as simple as that."
It was a nightmare for a person with a mental handicap to be removed from their home and familiar surroundings when their surviving parent died and to be sent to live in a strange place when they were grieving, he said.
It would be far better if they had an opportunity to adjust to residential care while the parent was alive. By failing to provide enough places, "the State will not allow us to do that". Parents in their 70s and 80s were looking after mentally handicapped sons or daughters. Mr Greene said he knew of one workshop where the average age of the parents was 76.