Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)

We are all here and having this discussion because 14-year-old Cara Darmody and her dad Mark are outside on a 50-hour sleepout. It is nothing short of scandalous. Obviously she is doing this on behalf of her brothers, Neil and John, and all the other Neils and Johns.

The figures were spoken about earlier. At this point, we are talking about 15,296 children who have been failed. That failure is to deliver on an assessment of need within six months. We could be looking at a figure by the end of the year of 24,796. As was said earlier, we are talking about a profound failure. It is all well and good to say that parents and their children can get therapies. We know that the assessment of need is required for parts of the wider system, whether it is school and whether you will be in mainstream or you need to be in a particular unit. It is required for payments, which are necessary for the added costs of disability. We have all spoken for a long time about the single point of access. There are a number of things in this that are good.

However, there is also an abject failure to have delivered upon what should have been done. During my time on the autism committee, we met with the Association of Occupational Therapists of Ireland, the Irish Association of Speech and Language Therapists and the Psychological Society of Ireland. Nobody had a discussion with them on the best means of not only carrying out these assessments but also delivering therapies. We have spoken before about this. We really have to get to the point of offering the therapies where the need is - that is, in the school setting - while being able to deliver some sort of service within the CDNTs. We have nothing but absolute gaps in them. We know from the figures for the end of last year that there were still 529 whole-time equivalent positions missed. We have abject failure, we have breaking of the law and we need to see delivery. It is absolutely scandalous that we are reliant on the actions of a 14-year-old girl to embarrass us into looking at this properly.

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