Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will quote from the response the Minister of State gave. He stated, "I know that my colleague the Minister of State with responsibility for disability services, Deputy Rabbitte, is fully committed to the continued development and enhancement of our children’s disability services through the implementation of the progressing disability services", and it carried on like that. I then look at what the Tánaiste said last Thursday, when he stated:

There is an issue with disability services and CDNT teams. My view is that the progressing disability programme has not worked. The progressing disability policy was announced in 2013 and it simply has not worked and we need to change it.

I am not sure what to make of that. The Minister of State's response put everything on the progressing disability services but the Tánaiste is saying they are not working and that we need to change them, so I do not know where that leaves us if we are relying on that.

Apart from that, the response the Minister of State gave us left us none the wiser in some respects. It referred in general terms to resources for Cork and the Cork ETB and I am sure that is welcome, but the key point is this school would not have procured a service from the private market unless it had been given assurances. It just would not have done that. It did that on the strength of assurances. Are those assurances going to be met, and if not, where does that leave the school? Schools throughout the country have frustrations about not being able to access various services, but the least they could expect is to get a straight answer. I truly hope this school was not led up the garden path and that we will find out this is all to follow, but if it was, that is not good enough.

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