Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North-Central, Fianna Fail)

We are moving to health now. I think the Minister of State, Deputy O'Sullivan, has covered education and transport this evening and I am not sure what else. Fair play to him. I want to talk about the LauraLynn Foundation. I recently met the chief executive and head of communications in advance of the budget. To give the Minister of State a bit of background, the LauraLynn Foundation was established after the loss of two sisters, Laura and Lynn McKenna, to illnesses in 1999 and 2001. This tragedy inspired their parents, Jane and Brendan McKenna, to found the LauraLynn Hospice, Ireland's first dedicated children's palliative care unit. They had witnessed at first hand the need for specialised home-like support and, of course, palliative care. The work that this hospice does is phenomenal.

When I met the CEO, she acknowledged the recent changes in the programme for Government, where there is a commitment to deliver a new national policy for palliative care for children and to increase funding for children's hospice care. The hospice is asking for these programme for Government commitments to be prioritised urgently in the upcoming budget. Time is precious for these children and their families, as the Minister of State knows. To ensure children have timely access to hospice care, the LauraLynn Foundation urgently needs that funding. Statutory funding has not kept pace with the growth in demand for the service and it will run a deficit of €1.9 million in 2025, rising to €2 million in 2026.

I will give the Minister of State an idea of the demand that the hospice experiences. In 2021, 203 children were receiving palliative care in the hospice.

For 2026 that is predicted to rise to 440. The number of families receiving bereavement care was 119 in 2021. That will more or less double by 2026 to 230. The number of community visits the hospice conducts has risen from 380 in 2021 to a predicted 4,500 in 2026.

There are estimates that 2,000 children in this country require palliative care. As I have just demonstrated, the hospice is providing care for approximately 440. There is clearly an unmet need here. The work it does is phenomenal and needs to be supported by the HSE and the Department of Health in the coming budget. To keep pace with demand, the foundation continues to actively fundraise. I again refer to its pre-budget submission. The amount it fundraised in 2021 was €3.2 million. By 2026 it estimates it has to fundraise €5.7 million. The service this group is providing is clearly increasing. It has increased by 180% since its inception. The demand is clearly there. I understand we are not going to negotiate the budget tonight on the floor of the Dáil. However, I would like the Deputy to take a message back to the Department of Health and the Minister, that of all the budgetary asks she is going to have, this is one of the most worthy.

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