OVERCROWDED ACCOMMODATION FORCED ON PEOPLE WITH A DISABILITY IN MAYO

• Inclusion Ireland supports public meeting to discuss closures at disability service·   
• Public meeting will take place tomorrow Wednesday 2nd June in Gateway Hotel, Swinford, Co. Mayo at 8.30pm 

Inclusion Ireland condemns the proposed closure of a bungalow for people with an intellectual disability in Mayo only months after another bungalow was shut down.  At Aras Attracta in Swinford Co. Mayo, a bungalow that was home to ten people with an intellectual disability was closed earlier this year. Now management plan a second closure, again a bungalow that is also home to ten people.

This will force residents into already overcrowded remaining bungalows. People with no challenging behaviour are being moved to live in severe challenging behaviour units, and people with a mild intellectual disability are transferred to profound units. This has led to chronic overcrowding, and intolerable living conditions.  

Inclusion Ireland CEO Deirdre Carroll says:“It is forgotten that these bungalows are not just a ‘residential service’, but are the homes of people who have been forced to move. It is simply not good enough that they are being forced to move in with other people, whom they do not choose to live with, in overcrowded conditions. If tenants in social housing had their homes closed down on cost grounds and were moved to other houses to share with people they do not know or choose to live with, there would be public outcry, and rightly so. So why is it acceptable that this can happen to people with an intellectual disability”? 

ENDS

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