Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

That is agreed, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak to this issue. We in the Labour Party will support the Bill. We are, however, up to our oxters in legislation on this issue, and I am not necessarily convinced that more legislation is the way forward, but we support the principle of the Bill. There is no question about that.

We have to interrogate the numbers more forcefully. I do not doubt - I have never doubted - the bona fides of the Minister of State and what she is seeking to achieve. The issue is one of resources and the lack thereof. I have sympathy with any line Minister who has to go up against a Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform in a budgetary process to fight for resources, particularly resources for children. We in this House seem to have failed miserably, collectively and historically, when it comes to children and their needs because there is this antiquated process whereby the line Minister of the day, through a budgetary process, has to fight on his or her back for services that should self-evidently be made available. We all come in here and speak about the needs of children and where society should deliver for children, but the evidence shows that that is not happening in reality.

I am constantly tabling parliamentary questions about the assessment of needs process and the children's disability network teams process. On 21 September 2021 I received a reply to a parliamentary question - Parliamentary Question No. 1213 of 9 September 2021 - in which I had asked the Minister for Health - for health, I stress - the number of children seen across all areas of intervention in each community healthcare organisation, CHO, area since the commencement of the progressing disability services policy on 19 April 2021 and the number awaiting an assessment in each of those CHOs since the advent of the policy and the children's disability network teams policy. In CHO 4 there were 997 children still awaiting an assessment. That is incontrovertible proof that the system has not bedded down and there is more work to be done. These are the figures produced by the HSE. The total number of overdue applications was 997. The number of overdue applications with exceptional circumstances was 238. The number of overdue applications without exceptional circumstances was 759. We do not even know if these are real-time figures because the HSE has said that the information that can be provided is for the end of quarter 2 of 2021 and that it is important to note that the activity in that period may have been impacted by the recent cyberattack on the HSE. As I understand it, applications are deemed overdue if it has been over six months since the application was accepted by the HSE and there is no record of an assessment report being sent to the liaison officer or the applicant.

I say respectfully to the Minister of State that we still have a problem in CHO 4, that is, the Cork and Kerry region. We still have a problem in Kildare, Dublin and west Wicklow. There are 936 children awaiting initial assessments. I ask the Minister of State to use her good offices and to use the weight of her office to lean on the HSE to extract from it commitments that those numbers will come down rapidly and that those children's rights will be met under the Disability Act 2005, which was subsequently the subject of High Court proceedings. I wanted to raise that specifically because it is pertinent to this debate. As for Cork and Kerry community healthcare organisation, there are, as I understand it, 14 teams, 11 in Cork and three in Kerry. However, again through a parliamentary question I tabled, I found that 4,611 children were transferred to the various teams around Cork in April but that only 1,694 of them have had their initial contact with their teams since then. We all want to give the policy of the children's disability network teams, CDNTs - we are so full of acronyms now - a fair wind, but the measure of success will be in the numbers and the metrics. If we see relatively low numbers, we will know it is working and at least parents and children will have had that contact with those CDNTs. However, I have evidence in an email here that I received from one family just last week. It states:

I am sorry for the wait in assessing services, but it is taking us longer than expected to meet the children on our caseload due to much-longer-than-expected transfer numbers. We will, however, be running parent workshops and groups very soon, which will assess parents in helping their children's communication and preparing children for preschool amongst many other areas. I am in the process of finalising these workshops with my team and you will receive a list of all upcoming interventions very soon.

I do not doubt the aims of the community development network teams. I do not doubt that they are trying to do their best. However, for parents to receive an email like that on behalf of a child sends a signal to them that here they go again, that they have just come off one list, that they are going onto another one and that they have not really progressed. In this instance the child has been waiting for about two years for services. That is deeply upsetting for that family. If the Minister of State could use her good offices to put pressure on the teams through the CHOs that we need to see those numbers decrease and see the services rolled out, that would give a lot of confidence in the system. Again, we in the Labour Party will support the legislation - there is no question about that - but what we want to see is the evidence of the system working for children.

Before I sit down, I will refer to one of my local organisations, the St. Joseph's Foundation. There is a great grá for all these section 38 and section 39 organisations. The relationship between Members of the Oireachtas and these organisations is excellent and we all try to do our very best to ensure that services are rolled out within our service areas and across our constituencies, and beyond our constituencies as well. However, there is an issue in Cooleens respite services, in St. Joseph's. If the Minister of State could intervene with St. Joseph's with a view to having that facility reopened, it would give a lot of relief to families in that area. I again thank the Minister of State. In fairness to her, she always has an open door and is solutions-driven, and we have to give her credit for that, but there is more work to be done.

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