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

The Tánaiste said we need to have balance with respect to the overall approach to disability services and flagged education. It is important to note that we are still in the situation whereby there is no assessment done of how many children at primary level will need a particular type of class or school when they go to second level. Then people cannot get access to education. Some people travel for two hours to get to special schools. Flagging education as an area where there has been overall improvement goes to show how pitiful the overall picture is.

Just to highlight the overall picture, in the budget, the Government €64 million allocated to disability services. I thought that was a typo, particularly as the Department’s capacity review stated that we need another €350 million to meet the unmet needs of disabled people. Only a one-off disability payment was introduced, which does not acknowledge the fact that people have disabilities every day of the year, not for one day. Looking at the overall picture again, there are matters such as the motorised transport grant. That was axed ago, and the Government has introduced a new grant. It is almost as if someone is saying "Show me your budget and I will tell you your priorities”. The Government is not prioritising disability services. If there was not an allocation to make real improvement in this budget, with such a huge surplus, it is difficult to believe that the Government will ever do it.

I go back to my questions, which have not been answered. Will the Government ratify the optional protocol? How does he plan to recruit and retain staff in children's disability network teams, CDNTs, now that this new plan has been released? The Joint Committee on Disability Matters has heard time and again that the problem is recruitment and retention, and that millions of euro are being put into trying to recruit and retain staff but this simply is not working. Then we have a situation where, finally, section 39 workers get a pitiful attempt at pay parity, but it is only a 10% increase. We still have a situation where staff in CDNTs do not have pay parity and continue to leave and go to HSE jobs. How is the Government going to staff the CDNTs?

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