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

Earlier I made the point to the Taoiseach that I think games or deceptions are being played with regard to what is happening to recruit the staff we need in various areas of the health service. The Taoiseach did not like it when I spoke about deception. This question is about children. I want to refer the Taoiseach to the figures, which are the HSE's figures and not mine. If we ask detailed questions, we get some of the detailed information. This is with regard to children's disability network teams. It is a very serious issue. There are 110,000 children waiting for therapies and not getting them. They are waiting years to get them. They are getting a tiny fraction of what they need. I was just looking at the recruitment report, which is a month-by-month report over a three-year period. In April 2022 in my area of CHO 6, 170 posts were allocated and there were 114 staff. At that time 1,000 people were wait-listed. By the time we got to March 2023, there were 184 posts allocated but only 120 people were in posts. This was massively short of what was needed. There were 1,217 people in total waiting across all of the CDNTs. There was a significant increase in the number of people waiting but, incredibly, there were fewer staff. I apologise; the figure I gave is for October 2022. In October 2022, 129 staff were working and by March 2023 there were only 120 staff. The number of staff was dropping. All of the staff numbers are well below what is supposed to be on those teams. How can the Taoiseach say that recruitment is happening if we are seeing the numbers falling?

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