Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for his question. The Government is committed to providing early intervention services to children with disabilities and their families as referenced in the programme for Government. A total of €3.2 billion has been allocated for disability services in budget 2025. This is an 11.6% increase on 2024 and represents an overall increase since 2020 of €1.2 billion. This increase will support the roll-out of the roadmap for service improvement for disabilities, including services for children and young people, through the provision of key roles and trainee placements for children's disability network teams.

As we know, the demand for CDNT services is growing every year and the progressing disabilities services, PDS, roadmap 2023-2026, which was launched by the HSE in October 2023, focuses on the ongoing development of CDNT services to meet current and growing demand. The PDS model is a needs-led model of service, where a child does not require a diagnosis to access services. CDNTs provide a multidisciplinary assessment of individuals' needs and strengths. Currently, 42,000 children are receiving services through the CDNTs. We know the delivery of services to children is inherently linked to the staffing levels in the CDNTs and their capacity to deliver these services. The Government has provided funding for additional posts to enhance the capacity of CDNTs in recent years. The HSE has advised there was a net addition of 272 staff in CDNTs in 2024, which is a 17% increase compared with 2023.

Funding has been made available in 2025 for children's services to build on these existing recruitment initiatives, with funding focusing on various positions across the CDNTs, including 20 senior therapist posts, 20 staff grade posts, 20 health and social care assistant posts and 15 clinical trainee posts.

Under the new programme for Government, we will work to increase staff, train more therapists and enable targeted supports for CDNTs. Through these concerted efforts, we will be able to have a more robust workforce in the future to meet the growing demand from families and children.

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