Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)

At the moment, this is no country for young children and for many people who have disabilities. This day last year I raised with the then Taoiseach, Deputy Simon Harris, the case of Harvey Morrison Sherratt. I raised the facts that he had been taken off a waiting list unbeknownst to his family, had been left in excruciating pain for his condition to develop and never had the necessary operations he needed to be able to regain health. Tragically, over the summer, Harvey Morrison Sherratt died. I do think we have reached a watershed moment in terms of how people with disabilities have been treated in this country.

To lose a child is the most tragic experience any parent will ever have to go through. To lose a child in such excruciating circumstances for the want of proper treatment is absolutely wrong. It is incredibly wrong, so much so that this State must take responsibility for it. We have a situation where Simon Harris promised when he was the Minister for Health that no child would have to wait for over four months to have the operation they needed. Yet we have a child who waited over three years for the operations. It is absolutely wrong. We have seen Harvey's parents, Gillian and Stephen, in the depths of horrendous grief, having to campaign for the rights of other parents and children to have the operations they needed in a timely fashion. They have also campaigned for justice for Harvey too.

It is wrong that we have a Government that has pushed back against having a proper investigation into what is happening in CHI. Nobody here can stand over what is happening in CHI at the moment. It is drowning in dysfunction. We have had nine separate reports, many of them not even published yet and some of them not made available to the parents, in relation to the dysfunction happening. There is a toxic management culture within CHI. Money is being spent without proper oversight. Children have had unauthorised springs inserted into them. Many children have had operations forced upon them. These are children who did not meet the threshold for those operations. Indeed, the waiting lists for children awaiting operations are now actually increasing. The buck has to stop somewhere. Somebody has to be held responsible for this. If there is no responsibility, there will be no change. This is one of the reasons we have asked for a proper public inquiry, along with the family, in relation to this issue. We will be tabling at the next opportunity a motion of no confidence in Simon Harris. There must be change in relation to this.

I also wish to speak about Cara Darmody and the phenomenal campaign she has run over the last year. It is incredible that she has had to go and stay outside the gates of Leinster House overnight on many occasions just to be able to put the issue of assessments of need front and centre. I am glad to be able to say that she has actually achieved a number of commitments from the Tánaiste in relation to this. She has received a commitment that the right to an assessment of need will remain in law. She has received a commitment that a deadline for a new assessment of need law will be placed and this will happen before January 2026. She has received a 100% commitment not to change the six-month waiting list to assess autistic children. She has also achieved the objective of getting extra funding into this area.

I understand the Tánaiste has said the Government is going to see if it can recruit therapists from the private sector to help with the waiting lists in this regard. I hope this is under way, because I have been talking to some therapists and they have not heard about it yet.

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