Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will preface my remarks by saying that if the Government is seriously interested in helping to empower people with disabilities, it would abolish the means tests for carers immediately and it would bring in a cost of disability payment immediately.

I will pick up where my colleague left off when she spoke about breaking the law. The Government is blatantly breaking the law. Twenty years ago - 20 - we brought in the Disability Act to give rights to people in a very limited way that an assessment would be carried out within six months of referral. Not only has the Government failed to do that, but it brought in an appalling discriminatory approach called the standard operating procedure. Again, families had to go to court and again the Government was caught and told it was not compliant with the Act of 2005.

I am not personalising anything, but the Minister of State, Deputy Naughton, is sitting across the Chamber. It is impossible to stand over this system. It is broken. I will give the figures and I will then come back to Radie Peat, who encapsulated this issue. There are 91 CDNTs in nine CHOs. I put it to the Minister of State that our CHO distinguishes itself by having a vacancy rate of approximately 30%. I have all the figures in respect of the failure to employ physiotherapists, occupational therapists and speech therapists, but my time is limited. In December 2024, there were 12,920 children on the waiting list for the CDNT. There are 14,200 children waiting for assessments of needs. Those figures are just astronomical.

This was best captured recently Oliver Callan's radio show and in a newspaper article, when Lankum singer and multi-instrumentalist Radie Peat took her courage in her hands and agreed to be interviewed. She said it was not for herself because it was too late for her and her child. She spoke for all those other mothers who are sitting waiting and whose children have no service. Radie Peat was told it would be 2028 before her child would be seen. The family's GP, Dr. Austin O'Carroll, said in the newspaper article that the system is broken and needs to be addressed at a political level. In the same article, Dr. Anna Beug, an inner-city GP and medical educator said that staffing shortages are causing the system to collapse. We are breaking the law. We are standing over a system that is collapsing, and here we are having statements on disability.

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