Michael Murphy (Tipperary South, Fine Gael)

I acknowledge the extraordinary Cara Darmody. She is such an amazing campaigner and advocate for her brothers, Neil and John, but also in particular for all young children awaiting an assessment of need across the country. I also mention Cara's dad Mark and her mum Noelle. They are both amazing parents and carers to Neil and John.

Living so close to Cara and the Darmody family, I have engaged with her, especially over the past four years. I have been so impressed with her passion, commitment, intelligence and steadfast determination to effect meaningful change. Cara is such a positive force. She is very clear. The political system needs to urgently apply itself to finding solutions to the assessment of need emergency. It is time all of us across the political divide started listening to Cara and that we all work together in a solution-focused manner.

This is an emergency. Our primary focus must be on the assessment of need process and this may require legislative change. However, such change must not in any way dilute the crucial need to identify the exact therapies a child would benefit from in order to reach the maximum of his or her ability. I fully support allocating more resources to significantly increase Cara's fund in the short term and indeed in the medium term so that those who are longest on the waiting list can be referred to private providers. To date, this fund has helped more than 3,600 children on the waiting list. It is so important we better resource this initiative in order to continue to support and deliver for those families and children who have been waiting the longest.

We need a real focus on recruitment and retention. While the workforce across the 93 CDNT teams increased by 17% between 2023 and 2024, there are still too many vacancies. I appeal to the Cabinet subcommittee on disability to establish a task force around recruitment. For example, notwithstanding the existing pathways in education to qualify as a therapist, how can we better recruit more therapists from abroad? While the HSE maintains a panel of external suppliers to support recruitment of therapists internationally, this procurement model is not working and I can point to many examples to support that view.

We need to engage with CORU because the process by which international therapists must, in the first instance, have their professional qualifications recognised by the regulator to be considered for registration needs to be reviewed.

There is no doubt that addressing the problems with the assessment of need process is a real challenge. As Cara wants, let us all work together. We owe it to the children of Ireland. As a new TD, this is a key priority for me.

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