Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will start by thanking colleagues from my party and other parties and groups across the Chamber who spoke in support of this motion this evening. I am disappointed the Government has tabled an amendment to this motion because if the Minister of State and the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, were totally honest, they know there is not sufficient funding in budget 2024 for disabilities. It is not sufficient to support disabled people; it is not sufficient to support disabled children or children with additional needs and their families; and it is not sufficient to support the organisations that provide vital services for those people. It is not sufficient to meet the level of unmet need, as is outlined in the disability capacity review.

The Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, and several others mentioned the UNCRPD and a core focus of that is independent living. We still have approximately 2,500 people living with their families, some of them with elderly parents, who constantly worry what will happen when they pass. There are approximately 1,300 young people under the age of 65 living in nursing homes and 2,000-plus who are still living in congregated settings. With respect, 100 residential places will not cut it. We need a focused and planned residential movement because it is very evident that is lacking. Many residential places are provided in response to an emergency and that is not fair on the individual because they are maybe trying to deal with a death or serious illness of their parent or primary carer and it is not their choice. They often end up, as was indicated by a Deputy, miles from family, maybe as a temporary measure in a respite centre, which has a knock-on effect on respite services for other users and we know they are not sufficient at the moment.

Regarding funding to organisations which are, as I stated, delivering vital and essential services on behalf of the State, the funding is insufficient in a number of ways. The Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, indicated that the inflation funding provided in 2022 and 2023 is in the existing service level of funding. I cannot see that or fathom how organisations will deal with the very high rate of inflation we are experiencing at the moment. The funding barely covers the expenses they have never mind dealing with the extra inflationary costs of that. They are not funded to meet many of the legislative and regulatory changes, such as the extra bank holiday brought in and the raises in the minimum wage. All of these things are essential and are welcome but the organisations must get additional funding to cover those costs for their staff. They have not been provided with that and are expected to somehow magic the money out of nowhere to meet the costs from within their existing budgets.

The same goes for multidisciplinary teams for adults. Again, organisations are funding those services from within their budgets and they cannot sustain that. Many of the organisations have for years been calling for multi-annual funding and again that has not been made available. Organisations cannot plan if they do not get the multi-annual funding. The capital costs are not sufficient in how they are allocated.

Many organisations need capital funding to upgrade their premises.

The disability action plan the Minister of State referred to and Deputy Cairns talked about is 18 months overdue. The Minister of State says the disability roadmap will be published next week. With due respect, the Minister of State said that here in May, and it was not, and it is now late October.

Many of my colleagues raised the issues with CDNTs. Pay parity is one of the issues but it is by no means the main issue. There was a recent joint statement of five representative bodies acting on behalf of occupational therapists, speech and language therapists, physiotherapists, social workers and psychologists. They have stated their concerns over safety, governance, risk management, career progression and the erosion of professional autonomy within the CDNTs.

There are a lot of issues I hope this roadmap will deal with. The CDNTs are not working at present. They are completely understaffed. It is nothing to do with the staff in those services. They are excellent staff but they are not getting to do the job they are employed to do. All they are doing is trying to talk to families and deal with irate families. They totally understand why they are irate because while children are not getting the services they require, we are creating a further level of dependency that will only cost the State more in the years to come.

On a matter of clarification, the Minister of State stated section 39 organisations would not be affected by the HSE recruitment freeze.

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