Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I will quickly respond, if I may. I cannot say that I can see those results on the ground yet. It is not the experience of families. Professor MacLachlan stated the design is for equal access and that it is working, but it is not. That is not the experience of families. As I stated, there is a family who got a diagnosis for their child 15 months ago and have received, overall, two and a half hours of essential therapy. Professor MacLachlan referred to the previous five-year wait. That is an incredibly low bar. The case to which I refer is pre-assessment of needs. He referred to more recruitment of therapists next year. The reality is that nothing will change in the next year. People will continue to wait and will have to pay privately, so it is not equal. Only people who can afford to pay who are getting the services. Are we at a point where we need to, at the very least, be honest with families in respect of the wait they are facing, rather than those families just being kind of fobbed off by the CDNTs and not hearing back from them, with all the energy and effort that goes into trying to get these services when they are literally not available? Is it high time to at least acknowledge that and, in the meantime while staffed teams are being built up, maybe consider supports that could be provided in the context of subsidised care in the private sector because that is the only option that people have at the moment? For some people, it is not an option because they simply cannot afford it.