Erin McGreehan (Fianna Fail)
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I have a number of specific questions. First off, I wish to put forward a proposal. As a Senator and parent, if I were to bring my child to a service, there should be full transparency in what I could expect, such as what I could do and what the best avenues for me to advocate for my child would be. In the area where I live, CHO 8, if my son needs X, I should be told that there are X number of children on the waiting list. We know there is a waiting list but the HSE should tell us where we are on it, what the story is and be fully transparent because parents are in the dark. I learned last week that a parent can self-refer to a disability service. I did not know that we could self-refer to a primary care service. Education and knowledge are power. There should be a pamphlet and information available as well as a billboard campaign to educate parents and our children and to show them what to expect, what the other therapies that are available, and what the multidisciplinary team means to them in a general sense. Obviously, we want individualised plans, but what does that mean? What do these acronyms mean? It is all nonsense in a way when I just want my baby to be cared for. This is a proposal which I would ask the HSE to deliver on, to provide transparency across the CHOs, and to tell me as a parent, as a Senator and a representative, what is happening.

What will happen to children who have already been through a standard operating procedure assessment? Will they have to be redone? Has there been a policy shift in the HSE recently in the recruitment of senior positions in disability services? I have heard anecdotally that because there are an awful lot of lower level positions, that people have not progressed in their career or do not see the prospects of career progression within the disability service and have, therefore, moved on to areas such as primary care. I know the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, has been speaking about and pushing for this recently. Has the HSE gone abroad to recruit specifically for disability services? Is there a model of incentivisation to bring home our highly trained staff and get them into the public sector, away from private sector? As someone who used to run my own business, I know that running a business is not all it is cracked up to be. A safe, secure job in a public service would be very appealing to people who struggle running their own business. There are many incentives available. How can we incentivise people, because it is like the chicken and egg scenario? People do not want to come in because it is under resourced, yet people are not coming in. How do we make it a positive place to work and a positive place for children to be?