National Housing Strategy for People with a Disability 2011 - 2016

8.4 In Ireland, the increasing demand for greater accessibility of housing is being metthrough the provision of housing adaptation grants and requests for specific designaccessible housing. This increased demand can be partly attributed to more people withdisabilities wishing to live independently in the community. Furthermore, with the ageingdemographic profile, larger numbers of older people are developing age related mobilityproblems which may require some level of adaptation work to enable them to remain intheir homes for longer. The CSO’s Population and Labour Force Projections 2011-2041 52calculates that there will be between 1.3 and 1.4 million older people (i.e. aged 65 yearsand over) in 2041, compared with 460,000 in 2006. This implies that up to 25% of thepopulation will be aged 65 years and over by 2041 compared with 11% in 2006. Thenumber of ‘oldest old’ persons, i.e. those aged 80 years and over, is projected to quadruplefrom a level of 110,000 in 2006 to approximately 440,000 in 2041.8.5 It can be concluded, therefore, that the demand for greater accessibility of housing isset to continue into the future in line with demographic changes, ageing of the populationand the policy move away from institutionalisation and towards community based living 53 .8.6 Table 8.2 shows the numbers of people with mobility and dexterity impairments asidentified in the National Disability Survey 2006.52Published by the Central Statistics Office (April 2008).53The Report of the Congregated Settings Working Group has found that over 4,000 people lived in congregatedsettings in 2008, of which 7% had a physical disability.82