Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael)

The Government and I recognise the importance of early intervention for children with disabilities and of ensuring they receive the right service at the right time. Under the programme for Government we are committed to ensuring that children and their families who need early intervention and therapy input can access that support in a timely way.

The key vehicle for change and improvement is the roadmap for service improvement for disability services for children and young people. The implementation of this roadmap is well under way and will continue until 2026. The roadmap contains an important set of actions that collectively will enhance children's disability services in Ireland. They include significant measures to integrate and improve access to services, to expand the workforce and to advance better communication and engagement with families. A key part of this work has been the improvement of access to services through the CDNTs. These are providing supports and services to almost 45,000 children.

I fully acknowledge that there is still a lot more to do to address the current delays faced by children with disabilities who are seeking services. The latest data received from the HSE for the second quarter of 2025 show that there are currently 41 applications waiting one to three months, while there are 334 applications waiting longer than three months in the Cavan-Monaghan area, CHO 1.

Recruitment and retention of health and social care professionals, HSCPs, is the most significant challenge. Work is ongoing to increase staffing levels. The HSE data from April of this year shows there has been a nationwide increase of 26% in CDNT staffing levels since October 2023. Most significantly, the CDNT national vacancy rate has reduced from 29% in 2023 to 18% in 2025. This is a reduction of 11 percentage points.

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