Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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I welcome the service providers to the Gallery this evening and thank them for the great job they do. I thank my colleague, Deputy Tully, for bringing this motion forward. I refer to all the wrongdoing and the wrongs in the budget. This is a really important one and we would not be discussing it this evening if it was not for Deputy Tully. Budget 2024 failed people with disabilities. It failed to recognise the cost of disabilities. There are people watching this evening who cannot afford things and the Minister of State knows this. Some great words were written in the statements by the Minister and the Minister of State and great promised were made which we will hold them to. However, that does not reflect the reality for people at the moment and the Minister of State knows that. If one is a parent of a child with disabilities and told they will have to wait two or three years for the most basic of therapies - be it occupational or speech and language therapy or other necessary therapies - they will have to go and find the money. They will have to beg or borrow that money to be able to do that. Parents of children with disabilities are being pushed into poverty because of this.

What is difficult for people to reconcile is that millions and billions of euro of hard-working taxpayers' money and VAT are allocated to disabilities. Why do people then have to pay for the most basic of services? It is wholly unacceptable. This Government failed to invest adequately in disability services and failed to mainstream disability access across all of the sectors.

I sincerely welcome that the strike action was averted last night but for somebody going to bed last night who is dependent on these services, they did not know what was going to happen during the night. They had to wait until they woke up this morning to be able to say, "I'm going to be able to get out of bed today, I'm going to be able to brush my hair today and I'm going to be able to do the very basic things for myself". That is not right and the Government's hostile negotiating strategy was completely uncalled for and unjustified. It should never ever have come to that. I have spoken with union leaders around this and we have to remember there is still a huge amount of work to be done there. There are hundreds of these workers, working across Mayo to deliver essential services. There is so much more I could say but I have to give time to my colleagues.

Maurice Quinlivan (Limerick City, Sinn Fein)
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I will start by welcoming the people in the Gallery, some of whom are from disability services and some of whom have disabilities themselves. I welcome the families who might be watching this at home or who are logging in tomorrow to watch it. I commend my colleague Deputy Tully who has been a real advocate for people with disabilities since she was appointed to the position of party spokesperson in the Dáil.

Often when families get a diagnosis, it is stark and, unfortunately, it is often a battle a day for some families. We need to end that and to make it easier. I am sure my office is not unique in having families coming to us in distress and in putting us in the bizarre position where we have to contact individual Ministers, contact the HSE and submit parliamentary questions for simple stuff, simple services, and simple supports families should have been getting.

The Minister said providers need to be properly staffed and, obviously, everyone agrees with that but they will not be properly staffed unless people are treated properly. As regards section 39 workers, as my colleague said, many people went to bed last night not expecting to have the services they vitally need in the morning and it is no way to conduct industrial relations. The unions were up for talking months ago and this could have been resolved months and months ago. We did not have to go down to the wire and we definitely did not have to have people going to bed and not knowing what services they would or would not have in the morning.

I welcome confirmation of a pay rise for those operating in the sector, although I appreciate they needed that pay rise and deserve more. A reluctance to invest in disability services and work within disability services has become part of the narrative around this Government. The recent budget was from a Government that failed to tackle the overarching issues of housing and health, but for many the cruellest aspect of the budget was the failure to appreciate the struggles those with disabilities and their families go through on an almost daily basis.

In my home constituency of Limerick, we have incredible disability service providers such as Family Carers Ireland, Dóchas, and Headway. Dóchas, for instance, is an autism support group that does fantastic work with individuals and their families, from family support to social clubs. It is the type of organisation that should be better supported by governments but instead it needs to constantly fundraise for itself.

The meagre €64 million allocation in budget 2024 in funding for additional services just does not match up to what is needed. The rates of poverty for those with a disability are four times the average and, of course, it is because funding is just not devoted to them. What should have been addressed, and was not, is the gap in funding for those who live with a disability. Unfortunately, I have run out of time.

Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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I will start by thanking colleagues from my party and other parties and groups across the Chamber who spoke in support of this motion this evening. I am disappointed the Government has tabled an amendment to this motion because if the Minister of State and the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, were totally honest, they know there is not sufficient funding in budget 2024 for disabilities. It is not sufficient to support disabled people; it is not sufficient to support disabled children or children with additional needs and their families; and it is not sufficient to support the organisations that provide vital services for those people. It is not sufficient to meet the level of unmet need, as is outlined in the disability capacity review.

The Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, and several others mentioned the UNCRPD and a core focus of that is independent living. We still have approximately 2,500 people living with their families, some of them with elderly parents, who constantly worry what will happen when they pass. There are approximately 1,300 young people under the age of 65 living in nursing homes and 2,000-plus who are still living in congregated settings. With respect, 100 residential places will not cut it. We need a focused and planned residential movement because it is very evident that is lacking. Many residential places are provided in response to an emergency and that is not fair on the individual because they are maybe trying to deal with a death or serious illness of their parent or primary carer and it is not their choice. They often end up, as was indicated by a Deputy, miles from family, maybe as a temporary measure in a respite centre, which has a knock-on effect on respite services for other users and we know they are not sufficient at the moment.

Regarding funding to organisations which are, as I stated, delivering vital and essential services on behalf of the State, the funding is insufficient in a number of ways. The Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, indicated that the inflation funding provided in 2022 and 2023 is in the existing service level of funding. I cannot see that or fathom how organisations will deal with the very high rate of inflation we are experiencing at the moment. The funding barely covers the expenses they have never mind dealing with the extra inflationary costs of that. They are not funded to meet many of the legislative and regulatory changes, such as the extra bank holiday brought in and the raises in the minimum wage. All of these things are essential and are welcome but the organisations must get additional funding to cover those costs for their staff. They have not been provided with that and are expected to somehow magic the money out of nowhere to meet the costs from within their existing budgets.

The same goes for multidisciplinary teams for adults. Again, organisations are funding those services from within their budgets and they cannot sustain that. Many of the organisations have for years been calling for multi-annual funding and again that has not been made available. Organisations cannot plan if they do not get the multi-annual funding. The capital costs are not sufficient in how they are allocated.

Many organisations need capital funding to upgrade their premises.

The disability action plan the Minister of State referred to and Deputy Cairns talked about is 18 months overdue. The Minister of State says the disability roadmap will be published next week. With due respect, the Minister of State said that here in May, and it was not, and it is now late October.

Many of my colleagues raised the issues with CDNTs. Pay parity is one of the issues but it is by no means the main issue. There was a recent joint statement of five representative bodies acting on behalf of occupational therapists, speech and language therapists, physiotherapists, social workers and psychologists. They have stated their concerns over safety, governance, risk management, career progression and the erosion of professional autonomy within the CDNTs.

There are a lot of issues I hope this roadmap will deal with. The CDNTs are not working at present. They are completely understaffed. It is nothing to do with the staff in those services. They are excellent staff but they are not getting to do the job they are employed to do. All they are doing is trying to talk to families and deal with irate families. They totally understand why they are irate because while children are not getting the services they require, we are creating a further level of dependency that will only cost the State more in the years to come.

On a matter of clarification, the Minister of State stated section 39 organisations would not be affected by the HSE recruitment freeze.

Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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Section 38 organisations.

Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Okay. I just wanted clarification on that. I will raise again the issue of hundreds of children impacted by sodium valproate. My colleague Deputy Conway-Walsh engages regularly with people in this sector. They still do not have a full disability pathway in place to deliver the supports and services promised to them. That is the barest minimum owed to these children while we await an independent inquiry.

I thank the Members and the Minister of State for being here but there is not sufficient funding in the budget to meet all of the needs that have been outlined by my colleagues here this evening.

Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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A division has been called and it is deferred until the weekly division time tomorrow evening.