Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

As I am sure the Tánaiste is aware, the Government is running an advertising campaign at the moment on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, UNCRPD. It is as if the Government suddenly wanted to make people aware that disability rights are human rights. Does the Tánaiste understand how disabled people, or parents of children with additional needs who are currently waiting years for basic, bare-minimum services, would think that that the advertising campaign is some kind of a sick joke? Surely the Tánaiste can see the hypocrisy when the State is the reason why people cannot exercise these human rights.

I should not have to remind the Tánaiste that disability services in this country are shameful. Rights are entirely notional. They are on paper, and they are in the UNCRPD but not an option in practice in our communities. Nobody gets anything they are entitled to without a fight. Parents of children with additional needs spend their whole lives fighting. They are in a constant battle with a system that is supposed to support them. The only thing their children are guaranteed is waiting lists. Sometimes those waiting lists last for years.

Some 16,522 children are currently waiting for their first appointment with a children's disability network team, CDNT. More than 10,000 of them have been waiting for over a year with no intervention and no therapy. These delays are so bad because of chronic staff shortages. More than one third of posts in CDNTs are vacant. In some teams, vacancy rates are more than 60%. This wholesale and pervasive State neglect has disastrous and lifelong consequences. Children have a very small and critical window to get essential early intervention therapies. If they do not, their development can be limited and they could be prevented from reaching their full potential and living a full independent life. These children are not just being failed by the State. They are being actively harmed by persistent neglect.

If people had a right, as the Government is now advertising, they would be able to take a case when they cannot exercise their right, but they cannot. Why? It is because the Government and previous Governments have not ratified the optional protocol of the UNCRPD. Then, the Government runs an advertising campaign to tell people that they have rights that they cannot exercise.

This week, three years into this Government, the Minister and Minister of State for Children, Disability, Equality, Integration and Youth, Deputies Roderic O'Gorman and Anne Rabbitte, respectively, have just published a new roadmap for disability services. Among other things, the plan says it will fill 460 vacancies by the end of 2024 and 240 by the end of 2025. Doing that would be an improvement but how is the Government going to do that? The plan says it will fill vacancies with a robust recruitment and retention plan but what specifically will the Government be doing differently to hire staff? I searched the roadmap as well for a budget but could not see it. How much additional or new funding has been assigned to rolling it out? Finally, given that the Government is advertising people's right under the UNCRPD, will the Government ratify the optional protocol?

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