David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the acknowledgement by the Minister of State that there were difficulties and challenges in rolling out these services and establishing the networks. Any Deputies who understand changing structures know that doing so is very difficult and challenging and, obviously, trying to align staff under the new structures was always going to be a difficulty. I certainly accept what the Minister of State has said in good faith. However, I want to get to an important part of the scripted response circulated on her behalf. It states:

Of the 100 additional development posts that were approved to strengthen Network Teams across the country in 2021, 13 were allocated to CHO5. However, only 3 of those posts have been filled due to challenges in recruitment and due to staff preferences for work in other care group areas.

We know there is a difficulty in the recruitment of staff in many areas of the HSE. We are seeing it in the area of home helps as well. The difficulty is obvious in the area of support staff and very important staff needed to roll out services for children with disabilities. There are several issues that arise from that.

I met a group of parents from the south east last week. They had mixed experiences. Some were getting good services, while the services others were getting were not so good. I found that the service level overall was very patchy, depending on where the person lived or the type of therapy his or her child was getting and possibly depending on availability. The Minister of State referred to the Minister of State, Deputy Butler. We met Finian McGrath when he was Minister of State with responsibility for disabilities several years ago regarding the need for additional speech and language therapists, occupational therapists and other posts to ensure the capacity was there. I am not sure that capacity was ever put in and I am not sure there is currently the capacity necessary to provide the services. For all the talk of early intervention, it still does not happen for too many children. What really concerns me is that the Minister of State's scripted speech notes there is a current waiting list of more than 1,000 children for ASD diagnostic assessments in the south east. That is a very high figure.

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