Care in the community for people with intellectual disabilities is allegedly the gold standard. The hollowness of this concept is shown every time a parent or other primary carer dies. This wholly predictable event is treated as a shocking surprise and immediately categorised as an emergency.

For-profit companies, whose definition of community is somewhat elastic, are generally the only ones with the capacity to respond. The bereaved individual with disabilities is often placed far from home, losing their family, their home, their day service and their community all at the same time.

A parliamentary question from Liam Quaide, Social Democrats TD for Cork East, established that the HSE is aware of more than 500 people placed out of their county, while 179 were displaced by more than 100km; 280 displacements were as a result of a crisis such as the death of a parent or a primary caregiver becoming incapacitated. What was known as HSE region B – parts of south Dublin, Kildare, west Wicklow, Laois, Offaly, Longford and Westmeath- could not even provide figures.

Tony Murray, one of the founders of Before We Die, an advocacy group for ageing parents of people with intellectual disability, believes we have replaced the high walls of the congregated settings of the past with kilometres of distance. Before We Die estimates that there are approximately 2,000 adults with an intellectual disability living with parents aged over 70, and a further........

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