Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)

Many people have said that it is particularly sad that Cara Darmody has to carry out a 50-hour sit-out outside Leinster House. Many of us have met her over several years. This is not the first time she has been up here or the first time she has been out protesting alongside her father Mark, on behalf of her brothers John and Neil, who have been abjectly failed by the State, and on behalf of all the other Johns and Neils who have not got the services they require in any way. The only thing there is going to be agreement on across the Chamber is that there has been a failure to deliver and none of this is good enough. The Government has to take responsibility for its failures. We have all dealt with these cases in our constituencies. I am dealing with a number now. Everybody has seen it before. We talk about a single point of access and we know that even those who are lucky enough to get therapies or an assessment still have to make the journey and deal with elected representatives. That is the sign of a system that does not work. I would love to think that we were getting the sorts of answer we would like on behalf of our constituents who are obviously not getting them. There are 902 people on the waiting list in Louth for AON, with 245 waiting over 12 months. That does not sound like much of a success. There are 15,296 children who have been failed. We cannot talk about success when, by the end of the year, we could be talking about 24,796 children not having received an assessment of need within six months. Government is talking about removing one of the few rights that people have. They are going to exercise this right because they are failing to get the service from the State that they absolutely deserve and that is required.

When my son, Turlough, was moving from primary care back to the CDNT, my wife said she did not need this as we did not need to put him on a list where he would not get any service. That is not to take away from the great work that is done by many people but if you look at the children's disability network team in north Louth, 53% of occupational therapist posts are vacant, as are 52% of speech and language therapist and 48% of psychologist posts. If you exclude administrative staff, there is a 36% vacancy rate across the board. I could go on but unfortunately, we all keep going on about the same thing. There has been a failure to deliver, we need to see real delivery and this is just not good enough.

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