Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Saint John of God Community Services is facing a funding crisis. The organisation has informed me that a meeting of the board is taking place this Thursday. If the €32 million deficit, which the HSE and the Government were supposed to address, and additional funding is not made available, it will not be able to provide services. We need to understand there are 8,000 children in its services. In my area, the organisation provides respite services, special schools, disability services, CAMHS and so on. There was a memorandum of understanding to deal with the funding problems. The money was supposed to have been allocated in the budget, was not allocated, and now we are facing an impending crisis whereby those services could cease in a very short while. Obviously, that cannot happen. I do not know if the Taoiseach knows anything about this, but it needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency because we are talking about a lot of children, a lot of families, a lot of vulnerable people and absolutely critical services that are currently underfunded.

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