Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome that. The Minister knows himself, for instance in health, that there are so many challenges in filling vacancies in the therapies and for consultants and nurses, in particular advanced nurse practitioners, all of which would make a significant difference to the delivery of services. Similarly, vacancies cannot be filled across the National Educational Psychological Service, NEPS, and educational psychology services that we will talk about later. Pay is an issue, in particular compared to that in the private sector, but there are many other issues as well, especially when we dive into the conditions of work within the HSE, for instance, and in hospital groups, which seem to put people off applying to work in the public service. All that means is that we are not delivering proper public services. The Minister is investing significantly in public services, but we are not seeing the benefit of the investment on the ground. In particular, parents of children with additional needs are not seeing that investment. People on waiting lists are not seeing the investment because of our inability to fill vacancies. We have a short window in the context of the public service pay talks to address that.

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