Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

By anyone's metric, achieving a reduction of 93% in a waiting list in 12 months must be acknowledged. Since 2019, some 285 new posts have been allocated to children's disability services across the country. The diversity of posts recruited include dieticians, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, psychologists, speech and language therapists, nurses and some administrative support staff. These posts have been assigned based on several factors, including the existing ratio of staff to the number of children with disabilities in each area.

To return to the children's disability network teams, they will provide a continuum of care for children with special needs from birth to 18 years, reducing the need for onward referral and allowing different professionals to work as one team. This will be a fairer system, but it will have to bed down. It will cover all parts of the country so we will no longer have areas with good services and other pockets where there were effectively none.

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