Patrick Costello (Dublin South Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State and thank her for her statement. As Deputy Whitmore said, the Minister of State has inherited a broken system and has only recently come into her role. It is good to hear her say that she wants to end the constant breaches of the Disability Act.

The backlog of assessment of need is coming down quite dramatically. On the face of it, that is a very good thing. These are assessments that have been caught up under the terms of the new standard operating procedures, SOPs. As we have seen in previous weeks, the standard operating procedures are just not up to scratch. They do not provide a quality assessment and they themselves appear to be in breach of the Disability Act. Will the Minister of State commit to reviewing them? It seems we are playing with smoke and mirrors in reducing the backlog of assessment needs but not actually meeting the needs of the young people who are being assessed.

Constituents have asked me to raise a few things with the Minister of State when they heard she was coming before the committee. One was the availability of therapists. Many front-line staff have moved on to Covid tracing. When will they return to their work? Constituents asked if the Minister of State thinks it is acceptable that these people are being moved from therapeutic services to Covid tracing when there is a backlog in therapeutic services? Are we making the best use of clinicians? A senior psychologist might be doing a parenting course which could equally be delivered by a social worker or social care worker on a multidisciplinary team whereas a social worker or social care worker could not do the same work that the senior psychologist can. Tied to this is parents' frustration at a lack of consistency. Often, when they go to services, it is with a completely new person. We all know that a lack of consistency can be a problem for many reasons which I do not need to go into.

Will we ratify and follow through on the optional protocol for the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities?