Carol Nolan (Laois-Offaly, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The crisis within children’s disability network teams, CDNTs, is well known to all of us. Major problems around recruitment and retention have practically become embedded within the system. I was shocked by information I received from the HSE’s disability services yesterday. It reveals how stark the crisis has become across all nine community healthcare organisation, CHO, areas, especially CHO 8, which encompasses my constituency of Laois-Offaly. The staff vacancy rate ranges from 19% in CHO 3 to the highest level nationally of 43% in CHO 8. As I have said, Laois-Offaly is part of CHO 8. This means that almost half the children’s disability staff positions are unfilled in Laois, Offaly, Longford, Westmeath, Louth and Meath.

I am also informed by the HSE that while the largest discipline within the CDNTs is speech and language therapy, there are a staggering 162 whole-time positions vacant out of a total of 447. Even more shocking is the fact that there are 3,129 children waiting between three and 12 months, or more, for initial contact within CHO 8. I have made representations for many children, as have other Deputies in the constituency, but I am constantly being inundated with the concerns of parents, particularly in respect of children with a diagnosis of autism who are transferring to post-primary school but still have not had initial contact made with them. This is very serious and is letting down and failing the children. Almost unbelievably, 1,903 children have been waiting for more than a year with absolutely no first contact.

While I state these facts and bring them to the attention of the Tánaiste, I want to commend the skeleton staff who are doing their best in these services, which are stretched. It is not their fault. They are too few in number. I want to state that they are doing all they can but they need help. The only CHO area which has a worse record than CHO 8 is CHO 9, which currently has 2,302 children waiting more than a year. This is a crisis of frightening proportions. As I said earlier, children are being failed. Incredibly, as part of the reply from the HSE I was told the following:

Regardless of the nature of their disability, where they live, or the school they attend, every child with complex needs and their families have access to a full range of supports.

This was stated in the same response which confirmed that there are 707 vacancies nationally across all of the CDNTs. There is a clear contradiction there. Will the Tánaiste accept that the CDNTs are in catastrophic freefall? Will he outline what actions he and his Government will take to resolve the issues?

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