Micheál Martin (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue which is very serious. I would make the overall point, and I do not want to go into the history of provision, that there has been dramatic exponential growth in the level of investment and provision both on the education side, in terms of special needs, and on the health side. On the education side, it is much more clearly to be seen in the transformative impacts over 20-odd years with investment in special education. Back in the late nineties and early 2000s we had no special classes or special needs assistants. That only started in the late nineties. Over the past five years alone the number of pupils attending special classes has gone from 9,000 to 19,000. Those attending special schools have gone from 7,800 to 9,000. The number of special classes has doubled and there will be further increases in that.

That is on the education side. I accept fully the CDNT situation is not at all satisfactory and the absence of fully staffed multidisciplinary teams is a huge issue for CDNTs more generally. In the 2022 census, about 13% of children were identified as having a disability. Huge money has been allocated on both sides but people are not interested and rightly so because people are interested in a service for their child and they are not getting access to therapists in particular. Recruitment is under way. There is an issue with the assessment of need which the Government is examining. That is drawing down a lot of resources following that High Court decision which means an awful lot more is going into the assessment and not the delivery of services. Our Government will bring forward legislation on that. It will be challenging - I have no doubt it will be debated in this House – but that nettle has to be grasped because it has to be dealt with in order to have a more efficient and effective assessment of need and to make sure that from day one, children get the services they require. Second, recruitment continues. There had been issues in the HSE around the recruitment of therapists. Those were not funding issues but recruitment and retention issues. The vacancy rate was as high as 29% in 2023. That has come down to 21%. The posts are approved and funded but the recruitment issue has been a factor. The CDNT workforce has grown by about 17%, with an additional 272 posts having been filled, but it is still nowhere near optimal. That is why we have decided as a Government to pursue a therapy in education approach, particularly for special schools - we want them to be in a position to have multidisciplinary teams separate from the health service itself for the children with the most profound special needs.

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