Dr. Niall Muldoon:

I thank the Deputy for his questions, which I am happy to address. On the Covid-19 implications, we certainly know from complaints we have received that children with disabilities have been left behind again in this case. The redeployment of staff to various roles relating to Covid-19, whether testing and tracing or whatever it might be, has left a gap of seriously experienced and qualified individuals not being available to children who need assessment.

That is not even robbing Peter to pay Paul, it is just robbing Peter and leaving nothing for Paul. That was an unfortunate decision and, especially at this stage, we should be able to bring back our professionals. Health and social care professionals should be back working on the front line of their areas, whether as an occupational therapist, OT, speech and language therapist, SLT, or therapist of any other kind. The situation that the Deputy talked about in his constituency is mirrored across the country, where healthcare professionals were moved into Covid-19 support. My instinct is that we have a lot of people who are not working and I would have thought we could have trained them up quickly to do testing and tracing. It is a shame that we use professionals who would otherwise be treating our children.

The Deputy also asked about funding, resources, retention of staff and political will. What we are seeing here is decades of dereliction of duty by previous Governments when it comes to funding and resourcing disability services. No Government can stand proud and even though funding has increased over the past ten years, the service and system have not changed. The Deputy mentioned the case report of Sarah and that was a great example of a system that set itself up to ensure that children do not get in. A three-year-old child goes on a waiting list which expires when they are five. If one knows that the waiting list is two and a half years, then that system is geared against the child. The Government and the HSE needed to have changed that over the past ten years and it has not happened. That is a matter of political will to push things to change. It is also a matter of political will to fund it in the right way and to get the right number of professionals on board. There need to be staff resources, retention of staff, an increase in the training programmes earlier on so that enough social workers, SLTs and OTs come out of the system.

The Deputy also asked what we would recommend when the average waiting time is 19 months. There are a couple of things to recommend. The Government should stop taking parents who challenge it to the High Court and paying huge legal costs to bring parents who are suing on a legal obligation that the Government has in legislation to court. That would save money that could be diverted in the right direction. We need to look at how the system has adapted. We need to find enough appropriate professionals to do the assessment of need. I am very much aware that the Minister for Health, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, and the Minister of State with responsibility for disability, Deputy Rabbitte, have put together €7.8 million to try to reduce the waiting list. I hope that works but it must work in a way that does not just move people from one waiting list to another. That has been an old-fashioned, three-card trick of the system that has been played by the services. We cannot allow that to happen anymore. Our eyes are open now and we cannot be tricked again. The situation needs to be clear for the future for every child. Coming off the waiting list has to mean the child is accessing services and not just having the assessment done.

The Deputy also asked about differences in geographical region and community healthcare organisation, CHO, area. I will hand over to my colleague, Ms Ciara McKenna-Keane, on that issue.