The decision of the HSE to further reduce services to people with disabilities was once more a betrayal of the country’s disadvantaged and their caring families.

This was stated by Marian Harkin MEP when she expressed her full support for the protest marches in Galway and other centres against the latest cutbacks in respite services which she said would put carers under further intolerable strain.

She said: “Ireland’s 160,000 carers who together provide three million hours of care, much of it for disabled family members, must not be targeted once more for cuts.

“The 2004 Disability Strategy has been decimated and the latest government betrayal of the disabled and their carers must be highlighted in the most public way possible in seeking to ensure that the present inadequate respite services are not further eroded", Marian Harkin concluded.