Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Conway-Walsh for raising this question. I acknowledge the challenges faced by children and young people in terms of accessing services, particularly essential therapy services, in Mayo. The lead agencies there are experiencing ongoing challenges in recruiting across a range of disciplines and grades to fully staff the CDNTs. Recruitment is ongoing for administrative and therapy staff in CDNTs via the HSE recruitment process. Since March 2024, there has been a net increase of seven whole-time equivalents, recruited from national and local campaigns into the existing panels of the CDNTs in Mayo. A number of posts are approved but have not yet been filled or have been at least accepted but the new person has not yet started.

Under the progressing disabilities model, CDNTs offer interdisciplinary support. They do not maintain waiting lists for individual assessments or therapies. Wait times for the CDNTs are not recorded per discipline but, rather, as per national key metrics since children's disability services reconfigured. As of September this year, 14 children across the Mayo CDNTs are waiting zero to three months for an initial CDNT contact.

There are many important HSE initiatives to address staffing and these will have benefits in Mayo, as well as in my own constituency and throughout the country. International recruitment is looking to draw people back, particularly graduates from Ireland who have gone abroad to the UK, the USA or Australia. There are relocation supports to support that. There is quite a generous package of relocation supports to make it more attractive for people to move back here and start working on the CDNTs. We have also enhanced the ability of the section 38 organisations and particularly the section 39 organisations to recruit. They can now recruit through the HSE website. There is also work under way to capture graduates early. The HSE engages directly with health and social care professionals graduating from Irish universities them to encourage them to join CDNTs or CAMHS teams around the country.

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