Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Every time I meet a family that has children with disabilities or additional needs, there is a common thread, which is that they have to battle every day of their lives. They are battling in some cases to keep their child alive and to get the best prospects for their child. They are also battling the education system, the health system and the State. We need to get to a point where that no longer happens.

We are a country that is full of resources and that is putting billions of euro away in the form of wealth funds for the future, yet here and now children with additional needs and children with disabilities cannot get the basic support they need. We are talking about children who are currently in pain because the equipment they have, such as braces, no longer fit them. We are talking about children who are in wheelchairs that are too small for them, but there is no occupational therapist to come out, assess and fit the equipment that they have. We are talking about children in classrooms where the equipment is outdated and obsolete but still has to be used because there is nobody there to deal with this.

We have a major crisis in my county of Donegal. The children's disability network teams, CDNTs, have vacancies right across the board. There is only one speech and language therapist in east Donegal. There is no occupational therapist or physiotherapist on the team.

It is the stories of the families that are the most important here. I listened to families who told us their stories earlier this week. In one family there is an eight-year old daughter. They fought so hard for the baby to be present in the world. She had open heart surgery at 16 weeks old. Her intervention team is practically non-existent. They say they got no help from the HSE at all to wean her off her feeding tube.

Another parent has a child aged 11 with epilepsy. The child has very complex disabilities and is peg-fed and non-verbal. The child is a candidate for scoliosis as there is 80% curvature of the spine but is unlikely to get it because they have no support in the local area. The child's last speech and language appointment was in November 2022 and the last physiotherapy appointment was in May 2023.

The budget ensured that children like that will continue to suffer. It is not acceptable. We must end the fact that these parents are battling against the system and battling against the Government. Let us do the right thing by ensuring the proper funding is there for the services. We must change direction in the funding that is provided for disability services last week.

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