Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State will seek an increase in funding and he is not responsible for cuts that were made to public pay eight or nine years ago. However, the State has failed so many children.

Last night, I attended a meeting of a school board. Teachers have told me that the HSE has resisted the assessment of need process because it does not want to triage people and provide services. Some children who have been assessed have had their cognitive assessments rejected after waiting two years for an intervention and they must now rely on the school system for assistance. Perhaps the Minister of State cannot update me now but I would like him to provide an answer to the committee on the cognitive assessment area. I also want him to clarify the HSE policy on these assessments. One arm of the HSE provided a particular cognitive assessment for a child with some type of intellectual disability but another arm of the HSE rejected the assessment because it did not match another assessment field. Clearly, silos are operating within the HSE and the only people who lose out are the children because they do not receive the interventions that they require.

The Minister of State has said that he wants to enhance ability. If so, then there must be early and swift intervention as soon as children are diagnosed thus avoiding people having to go down long culs-de-sac and ending up in a black hole without a service or intervention. We must shine a light on mental health services whether they relate to intellectual disability, CAMHS areas and education. Many children will lose out and will not be given the opportunities that the Minister of State has mentioned if we continue like this. It would make no difference if the Minister of State threw another €100 million at this area and hired 100 psychologists, 100 occupational therapists and 100 speech and language therapists because the clearly dysfunctional system must first be fixed. There are mismatched cognitive assessments and different services operating in complete silos. Therefore, the Government will continue to fail children with disabilities. Parents and schools are at odds and exist in the unknown in terms of this area. The system works well in some areas of the country yet it is impossible for children to get appropriate interventions in others. The solution is not just a case of Estimates and throwing money at the problem. We need to analyse how the system operates because we clearly have a problem. I have only given one example of cognitive assessments where, for example, one person that the Minister of State employs does something for a five-year old child yet when he or she is seven years of age, having waited two years, another psychologist declares that his or her unit does not use that cognitive assessment. The child must then return to his or her school, time moves on and the parents and children are worse off as a result. There have been two appointments yet the child gets no intervention. That is the reality of the current system. The solution is more than Estimates. That is why we need greater focus on this.